


The Reluctant Auror

by mercurybard



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Foster Care, Gen, Kid Fic, Trans Character, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The war against Voldemort had left so many children without families. Not everyone had a witch for a grandmother like the Longbottom baby or Muggle relatives who could take an orphaned child in like little Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.  And Dumbledore remembered an angry young man named Tom who had nowhere to go back to on school holidays except a cold, institutional Muggle orphanage.</i>
</p><p>This is the on-going story of Dumbledore's niece and the hodgepodge family she put together after the death of You-Know-Who</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Harry Potter universe belongs to J. K. Rowling. I make no profit and intend no harm.

The dust cleared enough at least that Kingsley could make out a pair of jean-clad legs dangling through a hole in the ceiling.

"Artemis!" he shouted.

Coughing, then a weak, "Here."

Carefully, the Auror picked his way across the debris that filled the first floor of Phinias and Matilda Rangolf's home. A misstep brought his foot down on top of a child's toy that let out a mournful squeak as he staggered to recapture his balance. "Are you injured?"

"I'll live," his partner called down. Her voice sounded stronger, not as choked with dust. "I'm going to need you to come over here. The Rangolf girl is still alive--I'll hand her down."

"Why don't you use the bleeding stairs?" he grumbled, mostly to himself.

But she heard him anyway. She had frighteningly good hearing when her ears weren't ringing from explosions. "Because that's where the Death Eaters' bodies ended up, and I don't want to carry the kid past that."

Kingsley positioned himself directly under the gaping hole and held up his arms (which, like his dark purple robes, were gray under a fine coating of plaster). Artemis Moon sat right on the edge, dressed in Muggle jeans and a red Gryffindor Quidditch jumper. "What happened to your robes?" he asked. She'd been wearing a set of black, professional-looking ones when they'd first responded to the distress call at the Rangolfs'.

She just rolled her eyes and lowered a black-wrapped bundle into his waiting arms. It was a girl-child, about five years old, wrapped in Artemis' missing robes. Her hair--dusty with plaster--was probably honey-brown when clean and hung in loose curls down her back. Her eyes were wide and fearful. She studied Kingsley for a moment, sizing him up the same way he would a criminal, and then let out an all-mighty howl.

"Shush, shush," Artemis called down. Then she dropped, landing with a small grunt and raising a cloud of dust. "It's okay, little Miss Witch, Kingsley may be ugly, but he's one of the good guys." She gave him a cheeky smile as she took the child from him and balanced her on one hip. The girl's screaming stopped instantly.

His partner had a nasty gash along the right side of her face. A deep purple weal like a burn scar cut across her cheekbone, and there was blood seeping into her short brown hair from a notch in her ear.

"What's this, Moon?" Kingsley said, taking hold of her chin and twisting it so he could see the wound more clearly.

She jerked her chin out of his grip. "The curse that almost got me, Shacklebolt."

Whatever he intended to say to that was lost as a shouting rose up outside.

*

Voldemort was dead, killed when a curse he'd aimed at the Potter baby rebounded on him. The whole wizarding world was celebrating, it seemed.

Not Artemis. When a witch paused long enough in setting off violet snapdragon-shaped fireworks from the end of her wand to explain what was going on, Kingsley's partner had whispered, "James is dead?" like one in shock and sat down hard on the curb, the Rangolf child still in her arms. She hid her face in the little girl's curls and didn't lift it even when the child began to pat her head in an innocent gesture of comfort and sympathy.

Howler, Artemis' tawny owl, found them maybe three quarters of an hour later, a scroll lashed tightly to his leg. The broad-chested bird landed on the Rangolf garden gate and looked at Kingsley with expectant eyes. He unknotted the scroll and studied the seal.

"It's from Dumbledore," he said, holding the roll of parchment out to his partner.

Artemis lifted her head then, freeing one hand to take it from him. Kingsley carefully ignored the wet tear tracks cutting through the dust on her face. They'd been chasing Death Eaters together for months now, and he had never seen her show more emotion at the scene of a murder than the slight tightening of her jaw in anger. Tears were uncharacteristic of her. But she had been friends with Potter, back at Hogwarts. Had recently taken time off to attend his baby's christening.

"Let's see what Uncle Albus has to say," Artemis said to the child, her voice only a little thick, as she unrolled the scroll. The little girl leaned in closer, pressing her cheek against Artemis' so she too could see the parchment.

Artemis read silently, in spite of her audience. Her hazel eyes reached the bottom of the roll and then flicked back to the top, rereading it again. Then she crumpled the parchment tightly in her first. Kingsley waited. After many months of working together, he had come to respect his younger partner enough to let her speak in her own time.

When she did talk, her eyes were focused on something in the middle distance, in the middle of the street or maybe just in the recesses of her mind. "The Potters were going into hiding." Her voice, when she spoke, was rough but strong. "They had entrusted their hiding place to a Secret Keeper. That person betrayed them and led Voldemort straight to their home in Godric's Hollow. Harry lived; James and Lily didn't." She stopped, chewing absently on her lower lip. The little girl was huddled against her shoulder, looking up at Artemis with wide blue eyes.

"Who was the Secret Keeper?" Kingsley asked.

Artemis looked up at him. "Harry's godfather, Sirius Black."

*

It was almost a week before he managed to track her down so they could speak face-to-face. No matter how many times Albus Dumbledore turned down the minister's post, he was still a vital member of the wizarding world's government. He found her finally in the middle of packing up her office at the Ministry.

"Hello, Uncle Albus," she said as she set a small pile of books into the cardboard carton Kingsley had given her. It had the name of a Muggle grocery stenciled on the side, but considering that she'd already loaded half her personal library into it, she doubted it counted as a Muggle artifact anymore. "I take it you've heard about my resignation."

"I did, Artemis," Dumbledore replied as he settled into her desk chair (well, not her chair for much longer--the furniture stayed with the office). "The Minister seems to think I can change your mind."

Into the box went her set of ink pots and a handful of quills (some of them with broken nibs and tattered plumes). "The Minister thought wrong--my mind's made up. Lemon drop?"

Her uncle took the offered candy and popped it in his mouth. "That's what I told him, but I did promise him I would try," Dumbledore said around the sugary hard yellow sphere.

"I can't, Uncle Albus."

"You're tired." His eyes, as always, were bright and kind, but Artemis could see fatigue in the lines around them, almost buried in his magnificent beard and hair.

"Tired and sad,” she agreed. The last thing into the carton before she sealed it was a very mundane cactus that Kingsley had given her, swearing that not even she would be able to kill the prickly little plant. "I just can't do it anymore, uncle, and with You-Know-Who gone, they won't need me."

"There is still a great deal of work to be done rounding up Death Eaters."

"And plenty of other Aurors to do it--others who are better at being able to discern which Death Eaters followed Voldemort because he coerced them and which went along because of their alliance to the Dark Arts." Maybe she closed the box with a bit more force than was truly necessary, being the cardboard, but she didn't care. Her face still stung and the hole in her ear throbbed, but Artemis scarcely noticed either over the ache that filled her chest, making it feel almost impossible to breathe.

"You cannot blame yourself for what happened with Lily and James and Sirius. There was no way you could..."

"...have known?" she finished for him. "I knew Sirius better than anyone except maybe James and Remus, Uncle Albus. And it wasn't just Lily and James but Peter Pettigrew and twelve Muggles too-- _ **I should have known!**_ What does it say about my fitness as an Auror that I can't recognize a Death Eater when he's sitting right beside me at my godson's christening? No, Uncle Albus, you can tell the Minister that you tried, but even you can't change my mind."

He studied her for a moment, sucking absently on his lemon drop as he did. Clearly, he thought she was making a mistake, but she didn't care. She couldn't keep coming here day after day, questioning every decision she made. Not with this ache that threatened to consume her.

"What will you do instead?" Dumbledore finally asked.

Artemis nodded to the sofa. "Someone needs to look after her." Huddled under her work robe (the one she used to keep wadded up in her desk to appease Kingsley, who didn't approve of her penchant for Muggle fashion) was the Rangolf child. Her name was Amelia, and she was almost four years old. All attempts to turn up living relatives willing to take her in had failed--Matilda had been a squib from a Pureblood house that had disowned her when her lack of magical powers had become apparent; Phinias was from the Continent. The Ministry was still making inquiries of its sister governments in Belgium and France, but it was doubtful they would turn up more than a few distant cousins.

"The Ministry said that if they can't find any relations by the end of the year, then they will give me the chance to adopt her." Her stomach felt a little queasy at the thought of raising a child (it wasn't something she'd given much thought to until six days ago when Amelia had come flying out of the children’s ward at St. Mungo's with a clean bill of health and straight into Artemis' arms), but there was a little thrill there as well.

"Where do you plan to live? Your London flat, Artemis, while...lovely isn't the best place to raise a child."

She smiled at that, dropping down on the arm of the sofa and soothing a hand over Amelia's curls. "I used some of Mother's money and bought a house out in the country. It's near the Weasleys' new place and the Lovegoods. Come on, sweetie, time to wake up."

Amelia whined and pressed her face into the back of the sofa.

"We're going to see our new house. Come on--get up, get up, get up!" 

Artemis' childhood hadn't exposed her to many small children. She'd been passed back and forth between her uncles, neither of them knew how to deal with children under the age of eleven. When she was very small, there had been a house elf named Smessie, borrowed from the kitchens of Hogwarts, but Smessie had gone back to her old job when Artemis was eight. After that, she roamed the halls of Hogwarts. In the mornings, various professors taught her non-magical things like reading and writing, picking up where Smessie left off. She had to be in her bed chamber (a small room adjacent to Uncle Albus') by nine o'clock each night, but other than those obligations, she was free to do whatever she wanted as long as she kept out of mischief.

She'd snuck into the students' classes, hiding in the back. Without a wand, there was a limit to what she could do in classes like Charms and Transfiguration, but history classes and Muggle Studies...those she could follow along with just fine. She started turning in homework assignments with the first years in the History of Magic and Herbology when she was nine. The Herbology professor (what had her name been? She'd retired right before Artemis' official first year) had accepted the scrolls and damaged plants with a conspiratorial wink and smile. It was doubtful if Professor Binns even noticed that she wasn't an actual History student.

Having a small child, barely past toddling, was going to be a challenge. And no matter how hollow and in pain she was, Artemis loved a challenge.

"It sounds like you've put a great deal of thought into this," Dumbledore said. He didn't mention that she had never touched the trust fund he had set up when she turned seventeen and took over custody of her mother, Ariana. The money was supposed to pay for Ariana's hospice care at St. Mungo's, but there was enough to pay for her treatment for the next two hundred years five times over. Uncle Albus knew Artemis would never take money directly from him, so he padded her mother's care fund.

"Yes, uncle, I have."


	2. Chapter 2

It was a couple of weeks before Dumbledore came to visit his niece and her foster daughter in their new home. Like most of the wizarding homes outside the village of Ottery St. Catchpole, Artemis' towered over the surrounding cornfields and looked like a strong breeze would send it tumbling down. There were two chimneys and a stovepipe poking out of the crooked roof and more windows than could possibly be necessary. The old oak growing beside it was bowed and had been hit by lightning at least once but provided very nice shade during the summer months. Currently, the leaves were just starting to turn. It was a golden autumn day--the sun shining down in a last hurrah before the cold dreariness of November really set in.

Artemis was in the garden (an untamed expanse of greenery surrounding the house--half the plants looked like they were struggling for survival while the other half ran wild, choking their brethren) surrounded by a passel of children, most of whom had red hair. She wore Muggle clothes--blue jeans and a battered brown bomber jacket too big for her narrow shoulders--and had a ginger-haired infant in a snuggly strapped to her chest. "This looks like a chipmunk's burrow," she was explaining to a boy of about six when Dumbledore stepped into the yard. He could feel the intruder alert charm activate as he crossed the inner perimeter of her property like a faint chime in his left ankle.

Her head snapped up immediately, hand already hunting in the dirt beside her for her wand. But recognition followed a second later, and she popped to her feet with a cry of, "Uncle Albus!"

She looked good--there was more color in her face than when they'd spoken in the Ministry offices. The weal on her cheek had gone down somewhat until it was a ridge of plum and silver scar tissue across her cheekbone. Her ear was healed, but she hadn't permitted the healers to use any cosmetic charms, so it remained notched and tattered from the killing curse that had almost hit. She felt solid under his arms as they maneuvered around the baby to embrace.

"The last time I checked, I only had one great-niece and no great-nephews," he said, giving the little one a fond pat on the head when Artemis pulled back.

"These are the Weasley boys. I'm watching them while Molly does her shopping. She says it takes her half the time and a third of the headache if she goes alone. Your great-niece is over there...smashing the slug into Percy's hair. Amelia!"

The sole little girl in the garden looked up at her foster mother's shout, a look of absolute innocence on her cherubic face. The little boy beside her began to cry. Dumbledore hid his laughter in a quick fit of coughing into the sleeve of his robe.

Artemis swooped over--moving with the same falcon-like speed and grace that she had once employed to chase Death Eaters--and scooped up the sobbing boy, somehow managing to balance him on her hip despite the snuggly. "Amelia Violeta Rangolf, we do not put slugs in our friend's hair!" she scolded, her tone stern enough that it reminded Dumbledore of Minerva's. Then she turned to the boy on her hip. "Buck up, Percy, it's not that bad."

"It's icky!" the little boy insisted.

Artemis surveyed the slimy chunks of slug in his hair. "Yes, it is. Let's go inside and get you cleaned up. Uncle, can you bring the twins?"

Dumbledore looked down at the remaining children. The six-year-old was still poised directly over the opening to the chipmunk burrow wearing an expression of extreme patience on his round, freckled face. A slightly older boy (maybe seven or eight) was sitting on a swing Artemis had hung from the oak tree, watching Dumbledore with curious eyes. The last two Weasley boys were toddlers, identical except for the smudges of dirt on their chubby cheeks. With great solemnity, Dumbledore offered a hand to each, which they took before they set off across the lawn at an awkward, toddling pace.

His back ached from stooping by the time they caught up with his niece in the kitchen. She had Percy standing on a chair next to the broad double sink and was busy washing the bits of slug out of his hair. "You have the look of a man who has something to say, Uncle Albus," she said as he turned the twins loose (they both went straight to a lower cupboard and pulled out pots and pans to bang together).

Dumbledore settled himself at the kitchen table, a long trestle table covered in decades' worth of polish and old scars. The house had come fully-furnished, sold at auction after its former owner was killed by Voldemort, but he could see little touches here and there (the clock over the stove shaped like an owl and the Muggle refrigerator magnets stuck to the front of the ice box) that showed that Artemis was slowly making this her home. "Motherhood agrees with you." He had to raise his voice to be heard over the ruckus the twins were making.

Every time Artemis leaned in, the baby flailed his hands in the stream of water coming from the faucet, splashing his brother in the face and soaking himself and Artemis. Percy sputtered. "It's not easy--Amelia had the stomach flu a couple of weeks ago, and I don't think either of us slept for two days. I keep having to run over to Molly's to ask her questions that I'm sure I should know the answer to already." Finally, she rinsed the last of the slug down the drain and dropped a dish towel over Percy's head. "Dry yourself off, and go find Amelia, sport. I think she and Charlie are hunting chipmunks."

Percy scrubbed the towel over his head a couple of times then dropped it on the counter and took off, the door banging shut behind him.

"But it all feels worth it," she finished.

"What would you think about taking in other children besides Amelia?" he asked. The war against Voldemort had left so many children without families. Not everyone had a witch for a grandmother like the Longbottom baby or Muggle relatives who could take an orphaned child in like little Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. The way he and Aberforth had raised Artemis had worked...for her, but his niece had been a highly unusual child. He still had doubts that they had done right by her. "There are others out there who need a home." He looked around at the large kitchen that still managed to be cozy in spite of its size. At the two pairs of Wellies--one little, one big--on the mat by the door. At the twins gleefully banging away on their makeshift instruments. And he remembered an angry young man named Tom who had nowhere to go back to on school holidays except a cold, institutional Muggle orphanage. "This is an awfully large house for just two people."

The baby on her chest had grabbed hold of one of Artemis' fingers, and she let him tug on it as she processed what had just been asked of her. Artemis had always been good at thinking on her feet--it was one of those traits that had made her such a bloody good Auror. But this was a choice worthy of more than just a snap decision. 

After a moment, she nodded. "I think you're right, Uncle Albus. This is too much house for only two people."

*

Of course, since it was Uncle Albus, he already had two children that he wanted her to consider taking in. One was a girl named Octavia Motts who was eleven and who had just begun her first year at Hogwarts. Dumbledore suggested that she send a letter via owl post to the girl, introducing herself. A picture might also be in order. He would arrange a meeting next week, to make sure that Octavia didn't hate Artemis on sight.

The picture he'd brought showed a chubby-cheeked girl with skin the color of hot chocolate and short dark brown hair twisted into sausage curls and pulled up on top of her head. The image in the photograph kept smiling--big smiles that showed all her teeth and squinched her eyes behind her silver-framed glasses--and Artemis found herself smiling back. Later, when Uncle Albus departed and Molly reclaimed her boys, Artemis dug a quill out of the grocer's carton (which sat next to the washboard, still not completely unpacked even though they'd been in the house for weeks) and a length of parchment.

' _Dear Octavia_ ,' she wrote after dipping her quill pen in a bottle of dark green ink. ' _You don't know me, but my name is Artemis Moon, and I live in a house called 'The Hodge' near Ottery St. Catchpole with my daughter, Amelia. She's going to be four in sixteen days. We moved to The Hodge five weeks ago (right before the start of your term) after Death Eaters killed Amelia's real parents..._ '

That wasn't right. Artemis went back and scratched out the last bit about the Death Eaters. This had to be the most awkward letter she'd ever written, but that wasn't the child's fault. According to what Uncle Albus had told her, Octavia's mother was a witch and her father a Muggle. Octavia and Mr. Motts had been on their own since Octavia's mother took off when Octavia was just six. Over the summer, Mr. Motts had passed away due to cancer, and when a representative of Hogwarts came to discuss Octavia's enrollment and take them both shopping for school supplies, they'd found her living in a group home. The representative had taken her immediately to The Leaky Cauldron, where she stayed in one of the upstairs rooms until the term started. There was a chance the girl didn't even know what a Death Eater was.

Artemis erased the scratched out bit and continued, ' _...and we were hoping you would want to come live with us. Professor Dumbledore is going to arrange for us to visit you at school next week._

_Sincerely,_   
_Ar...'_

She went back and scratched out the salutation she'd written automatically. This wasn't a letter to a superior at the Ministry. This was a letter to a child who might someday think of her as 'mom'. But what to put? 'Love' seemed much too presumptuous. The face in the photograph looked like an easy one to love, but Artemis knew she was a difficult woman to live with. She and Amelia butted heads over everything from bath time to bedtime. What was she thinking offering to take in more children when she still wasn't sure she could succeed with the one she had?

In the end, she went back and erased the 'sincerely' and wrote:

' _We're looking forward to meeting you,_

_Artemis & Amelia_'


	3. Chapter 3

Dumbledore didn't tell her anything about the second child he had in mind during his first visit to The Hodge, just laid his finger beside his nose and winked. Artemis discovered why on his second visit, on which he was accompanied by a boy of about nine with tousled brown hair that topped a long, pale face. "Artemis, meet Feliks Dolohov. He is the second child I told you about."

To Artemis' credit, she reined in her reaction to a mere blink. "Hello," she said, dropping to a knee so that Feliks was looking down at her instead of the other way around. "I'm Artemis Moon. This is Amelia."

Amelia stepped forward, cocking her head as she studied this stranger to their home. "Who're you?" she demanded. She'd dressed herself that morning in a lavender party frock over a pair of pink sweatpants and sparkly silver sandals. In contrast to her girly ensemble, she had a brown plastic garden gnome tucked under one arm. The toy had originally been Charlie Weasley's, but Amelia had grown attached to the ugly little thing. According to Molly Weasley (who had sent the gnome home after a nasty screaming match between Amelia and Charlie, who'd forgotten he even owned the gnome until Amelia unearthed it from the bottom of a toy box), most children had a favorite toy or blanket that they clung to when they need comfort and security. If Amelia had such a thing, it was buried in the rubble of her parents' home. That Artemis' foster daughter--who had informed her the other day that when she grew up, she was going to be a princess--had chosen to replace it with what was possibly the ugliest toy in all of England said something. What it said, Artemis wasn't sure yet, but there was definitely something significant about it.

"Feliks," the new boy replied. Despite the Russian-sounding name, he spoke like any other kid from this corner of the world. 

"Amelia, why don't you show Feliks your room?" Artemis suggested, knowing that would keep both children occupied for at least fifteen minutes. Maybe more, if Feliks found some toy that struck his fancy, and they started playing.

Amelia seized Feliks hand and dragged him into the depths of the house, already chattering away about her cool new room (very little of the furniture was actually new, but Artemis had bought new pink princess sheets and shiny silver bed curtains). 

Artemis waited until she heard the creak of floorboards outside the little girl's room before rounding on her uncle. "I was one of the Aurors responsible for sending Antonin Dolohov to Azkaban, and you want me to raise his son?"

"His father is going to spend the rest of his natural life in Azkaban and his mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances years ago," Dumbledore said calmly, like he wasn't asking her to take in a Death Eater's child. "Most of his relatives are also on the list of known Death Eaters awaiting sentencing. The boy is nine years old. What would you have us do with him? He's too young to start at Hogwarts."

Artemis arched an eyebrow.

"The arrangements that were made for you were unique and maybe not for the best. Nine years old, Artemis—there is still a chance to show him another way of life. To show him a way of living that doesn’t include hate and contempt and constant power-struggles.”

“You think I can save him?” She flung herself up onto the kitchen counter, heedless of the dish rack, her scuffed work boots banging against the front of the cabinets. She liked sitting on things that weren’t made for sitting—always had. From up here, she was almost on eye-level with her taller uncle.

“I think you can give him a better chance than a Muggle orphanage.”

“For the record, I think you’re crazy,” she said, but her protests were already starting to erode. Uncle Albus had this way of looking at a person that made them want to be better, like he saw this potential and was convinced a person could meet it if he just kept prodding at them. “I’m not saving anybody. That is not who I am.”

“You saved countless people, witches, wizards, and Muggles alike, as an Auror.”

“I was good at killing, uncle. And ducking…usually.” She ran a finger along the scar on her cheek and felt a weird shivery tingle spread across her face at the passing touch. “Those were the skills they were looking for in Aurors by the time I graduated. Oh, here’s Dumbledore’s spoiled niece, let’s give her a blanket permission to use the Unforgiveable Curses, check that she’s got the will to use them, assign Shacklebolt to keep an eye on her, and point her in the direction of the Death Eaters. See how many she takes out before she becomes a problem. Hopefully, she’ll get herself killed first.”

He was stunned. She had finally done the impossible—startled the great and unflappable Albus Dumbledore. “You truly think this?”

“What happens five, ten years from now when Amelia comes to me and asks why her parents are dead? Somehow, I don’t think telling her that I killed the people who murdered them will be much comfort.” She punctuated it by slamming the heel of one foot into the cabinet and felt it splinter under the impact. Her eyes felt hot, and saliva flooded her mouth just like it always did when she was about to cry. Stupid witch couldn’t even cry right. She dragged the cuff of her jumper across her face just in case a tear had leaked out. “Does he know?”

Dumbledore blinked at her. The gears were whirring behind his eyes as his mighty brain processed everything she’d just spewed, but it appeared he hadn’t quite caught up to her jump in topic.

“Does Feliks know I was one of the Aurors who captured Dolohov?”

“I mentioned you by name several times on the way over, and he never showed any sign of recognition,” Uncle Albus admitted.

Artemis sucked in a deep breath. In the back of her brain, she was already starting to do calculations—mental budgets, room assignments—but mostly she still felt herself wavering. This was one of those moments when she was sure she would be advised to ‘follow her heart’, but it was impossible to discern which roil of emotions was being generated by her ‘heart’. So, as always, she picked the least safe of all the available options. “I suppose his things are sitting in the bushes, just waiting for me to say ‘yes’.”

Uncle Albus didn’t even have the good manners to look guilty at being caught out. “We brought them just in case.”

Artemis just sighed.

*

Feliks let the little girl, Amelia, drag him off to her room. It was easier than maintaining his petulance in the face of her childish instance. They passed what might have been a formal dining room, except the furniture was all shrouded in dusty sheets, a library with shelves reaching from floor to ceiling and groaning under the weight of all the books they held, and a parlor where the chairs had been dragged away from a large Persian carpet that sat in front of the hearth. Then, Amelia let go of his hand in order to hold onto the banister as she climbed the stairs to the second floor. All the doors leading off this hall were closed, but she led him to the second on the left that bore a paper sign that said ‘AMELIA’ in pink squiggly letters.

“This is my room,” she said as if it weren’t perfectly obvious. “Do you know how to play Wizard’s chess?”

“Of course,” Feliks said, a little bit of sneer accompanying his answer even though he’d resolved to be nice to this girl somewhere between the kitchen and the stairs. She seemed like a perfectly good kid, even if she lived with a blood-traitor. He was just so used to being nasty to everyone that it was hard to stop. 

“Then you can play with Artie,” Amelia declared. She shoved open the lid of a trunk and started to root through the toys inside. Feliks hovered by the door, unsure of what he was supposed to do now. Some of the toys she pulled out were brand new, still smelling like plastic and packaging. Others looked like they were old in his father’s time, the paint faded and chipped. “She likes to play, but I don’t know how to play. She’s teaching me Muggle checkers instead.”

He drifted across the room. The furniture was all too large for the little girl—a foot stool had been pushed up beside the bed to help her climb into it—and the conflicting smells of clean lemon and old dust mixed. He had a feeling this hadn’t been Amelia’s room for long. Who had lived in here before, her grandmother? Feliks didn’t have grandparents—as long as he could remember, it had just been him and Papa—but his friends at primary school had talked about grandparents often enough. They were funny-smelling old people who pinched and gave presents. There were two windows, one on each side of the large four-poster bed, and they looked out at the big old tree that scraped the side of the house with its branches. “Why are you learning a Muggle game? Muggles are stupid,” he said as he pushed the sheer aside so he could see the yard better. There was a swing hanging from one of the tree’s lower branches, and it was blowing slightly in the wind.

“Are not.” Amelia had dug a dress-up hat out of the trunk—pointy and lime green with silver stars all over it and a silver scarf hanging from the tip. The look on her face was pure stubbornness, and Feliks felt his cheeks flush in response. 

“Are too. My papa said so.” 

“Well your papa’s wrong. Muggles aren’t stupid…Artie says so. She says they aren’t stupid, just ig-nore-ant.”

He clenched his fist in the sheer. Who was this little kid to argue with him? She wasn’t old enough to know anything—she still slurred her words like a baby! “Why do you call your mum ‘Artie’?”

“She’s not my mum. My mum’s dead.” 

Feliks’ mouth made an ‘oh’ shape, but he didn’t actually say anything. He didn’t know what to say. There had been several kids in his school whose parents had been killed by Mudbloods and blood traitors, but none of them had talked about it like this little girl did—like it was nothing at all. Her mom was dead, and she was learning to play some weird Muggle game. 

Amelia opened a drawer and pulled out a wooden case that had a game board on top. Pieces rattled around inside the case as she set it on the floor in front of him. “Do you want to play?” The pieces were little discs of wood painted black and red. She plopped to the floor, her violet dress fanning out around her, and started setting up the game board. Red pieces on one side of the board; black on the other. “You can be black—black goes first.”

Feliks stared at her for a moment, a hundred hateful things dancing on his tongue. She looked so silly in her mismatched clothes. Didn’t she understand that his father had been sent away? He wanted to scream and kick the board over. The stubborn set of her mouth made him think she could guess what his intentions were and was daring him to just try. She looked like the type to scream if she didn’t get her way. “Fine,” he said and flopped down on the opposite side of the board with a huff.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Jumping ahead 13 years..._

Artemis was pulling school supplies out of the Cauldron Closet (in reality, the coat closet in the unused front entryway where she had the kids stash their cauldrons and telescopes during the two-month summer holiday to try and cut down on the clutter in their rooms) when Octavia came by for a visit. Her eldest child, Octavia had just graduated from a Muggle teaching college and had applied for a student teaching position at Hogwarts earlier in the summer. They had been waiting anxiously to find out whether or not her application had been accepted.

"Artie?" Octavia called from the kitchen, using the nickname Amelia had originally used for Artemis. Octavia had been eleven when Artemis had been granted permanent guardianship of her and forcing her to call her 'mom' had just seemed weird. 

"In the foyer!" Artemis called back. She fished another size-two pewter cauldron out of the back of the closet. The entire side of this one was bashed in. "Do you think this dent's going to cause a problem?" she asked as her daughter came in.

"It won't heat evenly," Octavia said. "I think that's one for the rubbish heap."

Artemis sighed and flipped the cauldron over to read the name scratched into the bottom. "Todd, of course. The boy is hell on cauldrons, clothes...and everything else. Makes it hard to hand things down." And they needed hand-me-downs--she couldn't afford to buy new school books and clothes every year for every child. "I was hoping to avoid a trip to Diagon Alley this year, even with both Laurel and Benjamin starting."

"Artie, you say that every year, and every year, we end up in Diagon Alley the week before school starts." Octavia settled herself on the bottom step of the sweeping staircase that dominated the front hall and tucked her robes around her ankles modestly.

"I know...I know..." She set the dented cauldron into the pile of things to discard and scratched 'Todd - cauldron' onto the roll of parchment sitting on the floor next to the telescopes. "I can't remember if Edmund dropped Astronomy or not," she muttered to herself. Then, turning back to Octavia, asked, "Well, did you get an owl?"

Octavia grinned and tucked a dark curl behind one ear. "Yep--I'm in! Professor Kettleburn is retiring this year, and Hagrid and I are going to co-teach the Care of Magical Creatures classes."

Mindless of the dust (and other less-identifiable substances) on her clothes, Artemis bent over to hug Octavia tightly. "Congratulations, honey. You will be fantastic." Honestly, it was a better position than they'd been hoping for--Care of Magical Creatures had always been Octavia's favorite class when she was at Hogwarts, and Hagrid would help keep the more troublesome students in line. 

"Professor Sinistra said she would also like me to assist with some of her classes. They're at night, so they won't conflict with my other duties."

"You have to sleep sometime," Artemis reminded her.

"Says the woman who sleeps maybe four hours a night."

"Not even that at the moment--Neela wakes up crying in the middle of the night, and it usually takes me an hour to soothe her back to sleep. I'm starting to re-think my position on sleeping draughts." A search of the top shelf of the closet yielded two more telescope cases. One had a large glittery flower sticker on the end, identifying it as Amelia's (which would explain why it was on the top shelf since she'd dropped Astronomy after fifth year when it was no longer mandatory). The other was battered and suspiciously light. Sure enough, there was nothing inside when she opened it except a crumpled chocolate frog wrapper. She held it out to see if Octavia could identify it.

"Maybe Ian's?" her daughter suggested with a shrug.

"Hopefully, he has the telescope in his room somewhere. If it is and Edmund dropped Astronomy, then we'll be covered for this year. Benjamin can use his, and Laurel can use Amelia's old one. They will both need new cauldrons along with Todd, and I have no idea where Owain's is. Benjamin doesn't have a trunk, Laurel is too big through the shoulders to wear Sofia's hand-me-down robes, and I haven't looked through the library yet to see what books we're missing. Why do I do this to myself?"

"Because you love wizard children and a challenge," Octavia offered as she took the telescope cases from her mother and added them to the pile.

*

Octavia stayed several more hours, helping Artemis sort out school books into eight separate piles. The class lists were scribbled on a roll of parchment stretched out across the rug by Artemis' knee. Not enough books were scribbled out for her liking. In theory, Amelia could pass her _Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6_ down to Edmund who could pass _Grade 5_ to Sofia, and so on. Unfortunately, this did not take into account wear, tear, and bogies.

"Any idea who the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is going to be this year?" Octavia asked as she thumbed through Amelia's copy of _Confronting the Faceless_ (thankfully good for both sixth and seventh year D.A.D.A. students and that copy had originally belonged to Feliks and had been left behind when he ran away). Rumor had it that the D.A.D.A position at Hogwarts was cursed and it certainly seemed so with the number of professors that came and went. Gilderoy Lockhart had been the teacher the year before, but he was now in St. Mungo's thanks to a misfired Memory Charm. Uncle Albus had shared the details with Artemis, and it sounded as if he had gotten his just desserts. Lockhart had been such a git that Edmund had been actively campaigning at the end of last year to drop the class. 

As for whom this year's professor would be, her uncle had been infuriatingly evasive. "No, Uncle Albus is being cagey with me. And they've updated _Confronting the Faceless_ since I took the class, so I can't send Edmund off with my copy, damn it. We'll have to buy him a new one." Artemis insisted that all her children take Defense Against the Dark Arts for as many years as Hogwarts would allow them. Octavia had only received an 'A' on her O.W.L., so she hadn't been permitted to advance past fifth year, but Feliks, Amelia, and Edmund had all qualified to take the N.E.W.T.-level classes. 

She flipped open her old copy of _A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration_ (she had kept all her school books and was not above sending her children to school with them) and checked the edition against the one on Edmund's book list--it hadn't changed. "Score!" she cheered and flipped it open to write Edmund's name on the inside of the front cover underneath her own. Then she added it to his stack.

The backstairs squeaked as someone descended from the second floor where the bedrooms were located, and a few seconds later, Edmund walked past the open library door, navigating with his nose firmly planted in a thick book.

"Edmund!" Artemis called.

He backtracked a couple of steps to re-appear in the doorway, giving her a look of annoyance at having his reading interrupted. 

"Are you taking Astronomy this year?"

"Yes," he replied as if it were something she should already know.

"Okay, do me a favor. Go into the front hall and see if you can tell me who the empty telescope case belongs to. While you're in there, pick up the stuff that belongs to you and go put it in your trunk."

He rolled his eyes, but she heard the floorboards creak as he turned left down the hall towards the foyer rather than right towards the kitchen, which had undoubtedly been his original destination.

"Oh, he's a fun one," Octavia observed. She had been away at college when Edmund and his biological sister, Sofia, had been brought to live in The Hodge. There had only been five other Moon children when she left graduated from Hogwarts and went off to London to finish her schooling. Now, Artemis had fourteen children--Octavia, twelve still living at home, and one that didn't talk to her.

Artemis snorted as she held up Sofia and Ian's copies of _Unfogging the Future_. The one Ian had used the year before was substantially thinner than Sofia's, as if there were pages missing. Ian's went in the bin, and she wrote his name under Sofia's in her copy. Lucky for him, fifth years had a different textbook in Divination (which would have to be purchased because none of her older children had taken Divination before). "As much as that attitude makes me want to smack him, I can sympathize--losing both parents at thirteen and having to move in with this family would have been enough to drive sixteen-year-old me up the wall." 

"Amelia told me Uncle Albus is letting Benjamin start school this year," Octavia said. She was trying to sort out the various grades of _The Standard Book of Spells_. "Even though he's only ten."

"We don't know that for sure," Artemis reminded her. "Ten was just a guess the healers at St. Mungo's made when he was brought in. He could be eleven and just small for his age. More to the point, he's powerful and needs the training. He had a nightmare a week or so ago and all the shoes in the kitchen were thrown across the house...some of them hard enough to leave dents in the walls. Besides, I'm not stupid enough to send Laurel and Tristan off to school and leave him behind. He's bonded more with them than I could have ever hoped--far more than he has with me."

The boy they called 'Benjamin' had been found wandering the streets of London last February without a coat. He couldn't remember his name or where he came from...or anything actually. Strangest of all, he had been carrying the broken half of a wand in his pocket. The healers couldn't find anything physically wrong with him and could only guess that his amnesia was the result of a Memory Charm. But who had cast it on him, no one could say. Muggle police had found no record of his fingerprints in their registry, but that wasn't surprising since most wizarding parents didn't bother with fingerprint initiatives. More importantly, nobody in the wizarding community seemed to recognize him, not even when his picture had been run in The Daily Prophet. So like all other children the wizarding world didn't seem to know what to do with, he came to live with her in her falling down manor house, The Hodge, out in Ottery St. Catchpole.

*

"Well, it could be better," Artemis said as she looked over her final, consolidated shopping list. "It's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts books that are going to kill us." Only the first years were going to be using Quirrell's _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_. Everyone else had been assigned _The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts_ by Arsenius Jigger by the mysterious new professor. As a former Auror, Artemis approved of the choice--Jigger's coverage of the subject was far more thorough than Quirrell's--but as a mother, she bemoaned the need to purchase ten new copies. "Edmund, did that missing telescope ever turn up?"

Edmund looked pointedly at Ian, who ducked his head sheepishly and answered, "Yes, Mom, but it doesn't work."

"What do you mean it doesn't work'?"

"A lens is missing," Edmund answered for his brother.

Artemis sighed and changed the number of telescopes needed to two on her list. That would be another five galleons gone. "All right, listen up everybody--we're going to have to make the yearly pilgrimage to Diagon Alley. If you all behave and act like young witches and wizards instead of savages, then there just might be a stop at Florean's for ice cream at the end. But only if everyone is on their best behavior." She made sure to pin Todd, Ian, and Owain with brief glares to let them know that she was serious. "Ok, go put your shoes on. Hurry." 

They scattered--half headed for the mud room where their shoes were supposed to be kept and half headed for their bedrooms where they had left them anyway. Amelia came back out of the mud room (cowboy boots on her feet--she had bought them earlier in the summer during a trip into London to visit Octavia and usually paired them with colorful knee-length skirts) with Neela and Lyddie's shoes in her hands. Lyddie was sitting in front of the sink, carefully stirring a couple of wooden blocks around the spaghetti pot. Neela was sitting rather despondently by Artemis' feet, sucking on the first two fingers of her left hand. Leaving Lyddie to Amelia, Artemis scooped up Neela and set her on the edge of the kitchen table. The toddler didn't fight her as she stuffed her small feet into the miniature sandals, but she didn't help either. 

Neela had been up at one o'clock and four-thirty that morning, crying hard enough to wake Artemis. The first time, it had taken an hour of walking the third floor hall (away from the rest of the kids' bedrooms so she didn't wake absolutely everybody in the house) before she cried herself back to sleep. The second time, Artemis had been so tired she'd just brought Neela back to her room and laid the toddler on the bed beside her, catching a wink or two of sleep in the brief moments when the screeching stopped so Neela could catch her breath. If the three-year-old looked ragged around the edges from lack of sleep, Artemis didn't want to know what she looked like. 

"How bad is it really, Mom?" Amelia asked, plopping Lyddie down on the edge of the table next to Neela. "The money situation--how bad?" 

Artemis smothered a yawn in the crook of her elbow. "Not nearly as bad as you're thinking. You and Edmund and Sofia take good care of your books and equipment, which helps phenomenally. We just went from having a handful of you in school to having nearly everybody. At least during the school year, the task of feeding the hungry horde is a house elf problem, not mine."


	5. Chapter 5

They took the train into London. While Artemis tried to expose her children to the Muggle world as often as possible, most of them were still mystified by the trip on an entirely mundane train with tickets paid for by Muggle money. Tristan, who had spent the first ten years of his life living without magic, was trying to explain British currency to Laurel (Muggle-born but raised from infancy in Artemis' home) and Benjamin. Lyddie was keeping Sofia busy as she ran up and down the aisle, climbing up onto the seats and then back down again. Neela had actually fallen asleep in Artemis' lap, one hand fisted in the collar of her Holyhead Harpies shirt. 

They were about twenty minutes from their stop when Edmund and Todd came up the aisle and stopped beside her. "Mom," Todd said, "We've got a proposition for you." 

Artemis raised an eyebrow. This should be good. 

"So you know how my cauldron mysteriously ended up smashed?" Todd continued. "Well, since Edmund's going to be taking Advanced Potions this year, we were thinking that you could get him a new cauldron--something nicer than pewter--and I'd use his old one. This way you're not rewarding me for breaking something else by replacing with something new; instead, you're rewarding him for his continued suffering under Professor Snape." 

Fourteen years living under her roof had taught the boy how to wheedle, she would give him that. Edmund would not have managed half so well. "All right, but who's going to pay the difference between the price of 'something nicer than pewter' and what I'd pay for a basic model?" 

"I've been saving up the allowance from my trust. It should be enough to cover the difference," Edmund answered. After their parents' deaths, Sofia and Edmund's inheritance had been placed in a trust fund. The majority of the money was being held until they reached their majority, but each was given a small monthly allowance, and Artemis received a small subsidy twice a year to help cover the cost of parenting them. Both of the children usually spent all their extra money on books, but she had noticed Edmund spending an awful lot of time digging around in her library for things to read. 

"Proposal accepted then," she informed the boys. 

*

They trooped through The Leaky Cauldron, a parade of under-age children under the vigilant eye of their mother. Out back, there was hardly room for them all next to the bins in the small courtyard. Artemis juggled Neela over to her right hip and took her wand out of her back pocket and tapped it three times against certain bricks in the wall. The bricks peeled back to reveal an archway leading straight into Diagon Alley. She made sure to do a headcount as the kids passed through (Todd and Ian kept trying to leave themselves behind at the pub in hopes of conning the barman into letting them try a pint). The secret entrance dumped them out onto the street next to Potage's Cauldron Shop. 

Slipping her wand back into her pocket and then sticking two fingers in her mouth, she whistled. Loudly. All twelve children froze and turned towards her. She smiled. "Edmund, Todd, Potage's. We need two pewter size-two cauldrons for Laurel and Benjamin plus whatever it is Edmund is buying. Ian, two doors down at Wiseacre's. We need two brass telescopes and two sets of brass scales. Oh, and phials. Glass, please. Four or five sets?" She hadn't bothered to count out how many they'd need at home, but there were always a handful missing. In past, she'd tried buying crystal in hopes that the kids would break fewer, but it didn't seem to matter what they were made of, and glass was cheaper. "I'll be by after Madam Malkin's to pay for it all." 

The three older boys scattered. 

"Amelia, here's the book list," she said, handing the roll of parchment to her oldest school girl. "Can you please get started at Flourish and Blotts? Take Tristan with you." 

They peeled off from the group, and Max trailed after them. 

"Amelia!" Artemis called. 

Amelia pivoted back. 

"You have Max." 

“Roger that." 

And away they went, leaving Artemis with just Sofia (holding Lyddie), Owain, Laurel, Benjamin, and Neela still in her arms. "Come on, you lot, time to buy the first years their robes." 

She led her partial invasion into Madam Malkin's Robes of All Occasions where they were greeted by the squat proprietor who was dressed all in rose-colored robes. Artemis pretended to ignore the frown Madam Malkin shot her after giving her the once-over. Yes, she was dressed in Muggle jeans and a ratty (but oh-so-soft t-shirt) like a student, but she'd never been good at navigating life in a full-length robe. Back when she was an Auror, Kingsley used to make her keep a black work robe in her desk drawer for those rare occasions when she was supposed to look official and, well, like an Auror. 

"How many this year?" Madam Malkin asked, surveying the children clustered behind her.

"Just two," and she shooed Benjamin and Laurel forward. Laurel hopped straight up onto one of the footstools for a second witch, who dropped a plain black work robe over her head and started pinning the hem up to the right length. With a little urging, Benjamin climbed up on the stool beside her.

Sofia let Lyddie down, and the little girl ran up to the full length mirrors that lined one wall of the shop and started spinning. The tulle of her tutu rustled and glittered under the lights. "Mommy, I's a princess!" 

"Yes, you are, sweetie." Artemis set Neela down on her feet, hoping the girl would join her little sister, but Neela's legs bowed like wet noodles and she ended up in a heap on the rug. At least she wasn't screaming? 

Sofia tugged on the sleeve of Artemis' tee and, when Artemis leaned her head down, whispered, "Yule Ball." Artemis bit down on the oath that threatened to escape. She had completely forgotten that Ian and Todd would need dress robes for the Yule Ball. Sofia and Edmund had showed no interest in going (according to Amelia, Edmund had spent every Ball since his fourth year hiding in the library, and Sofia had completely disappeared when it was time to get dressed last year), though Amelia loved the pageantry of it. She liked dressing up and dancing. Artemis had been more partial to the snogging, but that was years ago. "I don't suppose your brothers are going to skip out on it like you do."

Sofia shook her head. 

"Of course not." Todd thrived on being the center of attention, and while Ian wasn't quite as outgoing, she was starting to suspect he had a girlfriend based on the almost daily appearance of a certain owl at their home this summer. Not that he would ever tell her, of course, but she hadn't spent three years training to be an Auror and then a year tracking down Death Eaters for nothing. Taking out her purse, she shook a handful of galleons into her palm. "Go to Wiseacre's and pay for Ian's purchases and send him back here. Then go get Todd." 

Laurel was already done with her fittings and digging through a basket of dragon-hide gloves, trying to find a right and a left that both fit. Benjamin was still up on the stool, Madam Malkin clucking as she re-pinned the hem. "He's a short one, isn't he?" 

"Small for his age," Artemis agreed, giving Benjamin a conspiratorial wink over the top of the witch's head. She didn't honestly believe he was eleven, but she'd started at Hogwarts at age eight. A little early education never hurt anyone, and the testing Octavia had done with him this summer showed that he could read, write, and do arithmetic as well as an eleven-year-old Muggle. 

Both of her fourth year hooligans came crashing into the robe shop together, laughing over some secret joke or prank. "Dress robes," she said, pointing to the stool Laurel had vacated. 

Ian made a face as if he was suddenly in pain, but Todd hopped up and held his arms out wide. "You got anything in neon orange or maybe a lime green." Madam Malkin actually blanched at the suggestions. 

"How about something a dark or royal blue?" Artemis asked. "Those look nice with the hair." Todd stuck his tongue out at her reflection in the mirror, and she made a face back.

"Did you see the papers, Mom?" Todd asked after the shop witch shoved a navy blue robe over his head. 

Artemis stifled another yawn. "When exactly have I had time to read the papers today?"

"You should make time," her red-headed boy continued. "A Death Eater has escaped from Azkaban." 

"Oh, yes," Madam Malkin added as she finished pinning up the left sleeve on one of Benjamin's school robes. "It's even been in the Muggle papers, though they obviously don't tell the whole story. 'Dangerous Criminal Sirius Black Escapes'--poor sots have no idea just how dangerous that fellow really is. Of course, the last time he was loose, he killed twelve Muggles and that poor Peter Pettigrew, so they have a right to know..."

Artemis staggered back, fetching up against Ian, who frowned at her. He'd sprouted up over the summer like one of the weeds in her garden and was now maybe an inch or so taller than her. The thick sole of her boots versus the thin one of his battered trainers meant they were basically eye-to-eye. Who had told him he could get so tall?

"Mom, are you okay?" he asked. Or so perceptive?

She shook her head. 

"Was he one of the guys you put away?" Todd asked, seeing her reaction in the mirror. He turned on his stool, making the witch attempting to fit him squawk. "Our mom used to be an Auror," he explained to her.

"That's not going to keep me from sticking you with a pin if you don't hold still," the witch replied sourly.

It took Artemis a minute to realize she was holding her breath and a several more seconds after that before she could let it out past the sudden weight on her chest and suck in another one. "I...I was in the same class as James and Lily Potter," she finally said, focusing on the top of Todd's head. His orange-red hair stuck up in untamable licks and curls. Always had. He'd been her first baby, brought to her in the months following the defeat of You-Know-Who. His original guardians--his mother's sister and her partner--had been killed during the war. He was the baby she'd walked the floor with for hours even after he'd nodded off, losing herself in his sweet baby scent and trying to bury her grief. "I went to school with Peter and Black." She had never explained this to him...to any of them, even Octavia. Thirteen years later, she still couldn't find the words to explain what it was like to be so betrayed and to lose almost everyone important in her life. 

And she wasn't about to start talking here in the middle of the shop.

"Any issues with the robe, Todd?" 

Yes, it was a blatant change of topic, but her son was kind enough to roll with it. He flapped his arms experimentally. The sleeves were baggy enough that they reached to his knees even when he held his arms above his head. All that fabric completely swamped his narrow frame. Todd had done his own share of growing over the summer and looked like someone had placed her once-sturdy toddler on a rack and stretched him into this coltish teenager. "Nope."

"It looks like you're wearing a circus tent," Ian said bluntly.

Madam Malkin waved her hand dismissively. "Just an hour or so with my needle and it will fit him beautifully. Now, up you go, handsome." Benjamin, who'd begun to fidget during his final fitting, hopped gratefully off the stool and went to go stand in the corner with Laurel. Ian stepped up in his place, noticeably careful about placing his big feet on the small stool, which still wobbled and threatened to overturn. He was going to need new trainers by Christmas--she could see his toes pushing against the ends of them from over here. "Any color in mind for this handsome young man?" Madam Malkin asked.

Artemis shook her head. Ian was a good-looking young man with a slightly goofy smile and a mop of brown hair that usually needed cutting. Unlike Todd, there wasn’t much of a chance of something actually clashing with his hair or skin. "Ian?"

He shrugged. "I don't really care. I'll probably only wear it until they're done with the speeches."

Artemis scrubbed a hand over her face. "These are things you don't tell your mother when she's about to fork over cold hard silver to buy you something."

"Sorry," he said with another shrug.

Madam Malkin clucked her tongue at their antics and started flipping through a rack of robes in the corner. All of them were in bright jewel tones with a slight metallic sheen. 

"Try this end on, dear," the proprietor said, holding out a ruby-colored robe on a hanger. 

Ian shrugged into it and flapped his arms out experimentally. It didn't pull across the shoulders. "It's fine. Can we get ice cream now?"

Her stomach was such a knot that the thought of putting something sweet in it was enough to make her sick, but ice cream would distract the boys. "If Amelia's done at the bookstore."

*

Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour was sandwiched between Wiseacre's and Madam Malkin's. According to the chalkboard propped just outside the front door, the flavors of the day were cantaloupe and Turkish coffee. Inside on the left, a brass-trimmed dip cabinet ran the entire length of the store, its glass panes shielding dozens of gleaming brass buckets of ice cream in all colors of the rainbow from the greedy gazes of children.

The teenage witch with the nose ring and green hair behind the counter looked vaguely familiar, and Amelia greeted her with a nod of her head as she juggled paper-wrapped parcels of books from Flourish and Blott's. "Hey, Ms. M.," the clerk greeted Artemis. "What'll it be today?"

"One kid's scoop of chocolate in a cup for this one," Artemis replied, bouncing Lyddie on her right hip, "And another of the Turkish coffee for that one." She jerked her head towards Neela, who was safe in Sofia's arms. Molly had suggested the other day that maybe the reason Neela wasn't eating well was because the food didn't taste as strong as she was used to. Her homeland, where she had spent the first two and a half years of her life, was the place where curry was invented after all. Compared to that, the products of Artemis' kitchen were downright bland. Todd had a tricky stomach, and Artemis wasn't much a cook--she relied mostly on pastas and potatoes supplemented with fresh produce. Cooking meat always made her uncomfortable, so she avoided it as much as possible. 

Which was ridiculous when you considered that she'd scored an 'E' on her Potions N.E.W.T. Brewing a potion wasn't that different from cooking in theory, but in practice, she was more likely to ruin a vat of spaghetti pasta than a complicated forgetfulness potion.

"Max?" 

Her youngest son had shouldered his way right up to the front of group clustered across dip cabinet from the clerk, so close to the ice cream that his warm breath was fogging up the cool glass. He had opted to wear his Mickey Mouse ears for their outing today. Octavia had brought it back from the Continent. She and a couple of Muggle friends from the teaching college had gone to Disneyland Paris for a midterm break. They'd only been gone five days, but Octavia had sent six owls (two of which she beat home) with long letters describing all the mundane magic she was witnessing. She came home laden with gifts for her siblings--including Pirates of the Caribbean merchandise, which had fuel the Unholy Trio's obsession with all things pirate. Max hadn't shown much interest in the theme park or the famous cartoon mouse, but the hat with its large plastic ears was odd enough to catch his sartorial fancy. Soon after his sixth birthday, he had discovered a trunk of old clothes from the end of the 19th century in the attic of The Hodge. Frock coats, shirtwaists, bloomers, and morning coats--all of it remarkably well-preserved under layers of spelled tissue. There had been photographs--unmoving Muggle ones--gone yellow with age in the trunk as well. Artemis couldn't fathom who had left it in her attic. The Hodge's inhabitants, as far as she knew, had always been wizards all the way back to its construction. Maybe a Muggle-born who had married into the family?

Whatever the case, the contents of the trunk piqued Max's interest. Sofia had worked out a clever charm (probably similar to the one Madam Malkin planned to use on Todd's dress robes) to shrink the men’s' clothing to Max's size. Right now, he wore a pair of green breeches and a white t-shirt under a black morning coat. He didn't have stockings (Artemis had toyed with the idea of buying him white tights--the thick sort that ballet students wore--but hadn't found a shop that sold them), so he made do with too-large knee socks stolen from Laurel. None of the footwear in the truck had been well-preserved, and Sofia's shrinking spell didn't work on leather (she was in the process of tweaking the charm), so Artemis had taken a pair of patent leather Mary Jane’s that Laurel had out-grown and cut the strap that went over the arch of the foot off. He had a tendency to walk out of them, but such was the price of fashion, she supposed. 

All of this finery, crowned with Mickey Mouse ears. It made for an interesting sight.

"Walnut Belgian chocolate, please," Max said, stabbing his finger against the glass. 

A young wizard slid Lyddie and Neela's little bowls of ice cream across the counter as the green-haired witch dished out chocolate orange praline for Laurel and raspberry sorbet for Tristan. When handed her dish and a small silver spoon, Lyddie grabbed it eagerly and ran over to one of the booths that lined the left side wall of the ice cream parlour. Artemis followed with Neela. While Lyddie dug in with gusto, smearing the chocolate all over her face, Neela wouldn't even pick up the spoon. Artemis scooped up a tiny amount and tried coaxing her to eat it, rubbing a bit on her lower lip. Neela couldn't help but stick her tongue out to lick away the cold blob. She tasted it carefully, a serious expression on her face as if she expected to be disappointed. 

"Any good?" Artemis asked.

Neela nodded and opened her mouth for more. At three, she was more than capable of feeding herself, but Artemis kept spooning the ice cream in. Calories were going into the skinny little girl and she was allowing Artemis to do something that might be construed as 'bonding'. 

"Hey, Mom," Todd called from the counter. "What can I eat here?"

His stomach didn't seem to know how to handle dairy or strong spices. At home, Artemis could control what went into the food she cooked. At school, the house elves knew about his intolerances and went out of their way to make things he could stomach. (Smessie in particularly had taken a grandmotherly interest in the boy and went out of her way to make delicious dairy-free pastries for him.) "Either sorbet or an Italian ice," she replied. 

Laurel, Benjamin, and Tristan squashed themselves onto the bench across from her, Laurel in the middle. She had her 'serious face' on. "Mom, can I get a dragon?"

"The Warlocks' Convention of 1709 outlawed dragon ownership in Britain, honey. You know that." The only reason Artemis knew the exact statute was because this was not the first time Laurel had made his request.

"But Mom..." The child managed to dragon 'mom' out for eight syllables.

"Stop it with the whining," Artemis ordered, setting down Neela's spoon. "Keeping a dragon as a pet is illegal, and in this family, we obey the law."

Laurel's lower lip jutted out far enough that Artemis could have landed a broom on it. "The law's stupid."

"Pull your lip in--pouting isn't going to impress me. And, actually, that particular law isn't stupid. Tell me, missy, when this theoretical dragon of yours gets to be full grown, how are you going to hide it from Muggles? We only live a few kilometers from the village."

"I'd train it to stay away from Muggles." On her left, Tristan was rolling his eyes. On her right, Benjamin watched the play-by-play curiously as he ate his strawberry ice cream cone.

"Dragons are wild creatures, honey, you can't train them. Not reliably. We're going to go to Eeylops after everyone finishes their ice cream, and you can pick out a pet." Turning her attention to Benjamin, Artemis clarified, "First year students are allowed to bring a cat or owl or toad with them to Hogwarts. Owls are useful for carrying messages and small packages. Cats are more traditional and came in handy my fifth year when the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory was infested with mice." Nobody had ever been able to determine if that had been a prank or if the mice had just naturally found a way inside the castle. "Students used to bring boxes of toads every year to dissect for spell components, but the Ministry passed laws regarding animal cruelty that put a stop to that. Now, the only ones who really bother with toads are either students wanting a low-maintenance pet or little boys who want to try and gross out their female classmates."

They would need to get a pet for Owain too. He had been brought to The Hodge the night before the children left of Hogwarts last year, and there hadn't been time to do any shopping for him except a brief stop-off at Ollivander's for his wand before heading to King's Cross to meet the train. She had scrounged up most of the books and sent him off with a trunk of Ian's old robes. The rest had to be sent by owl post. Artemis knew Owain resented her for sending him off to school in hand-me-downs and not even the proper equipment for a first year student. He was the last descendant of the ancient and notorious Pureblood house, Burke-White. Almost as old and infamous as the house of Black. 

Sirius Black, escaped from Hogwarts. One of the ice cream parlour's patrons had left their copy of The Daily Prophet behind in the booth, and Artemis opened the newspaper to a picture of Black howling on the front page. The Prophet's article was as lacking in fact as she had come to expect from the English wizarding community’s only major newspaper. There was the inevitable criticism of Fudge's decision to inform the Muggle Minister about Black's escape and Fudge's equally inevitable whining about how he had no choice in the matter. No real mention of the efforts being used to hunt Black. No mention of whether Kingsley had been assigned to the case (he'd better have been--Shacklebolt was the best damn Auror in Britain and if Fudge was too stupid to see that, then well...). 

She dared herself to flip back to the picture on the front page as Ian and Todd piled into the booth behind her, jostling one another and yelling back and forth with the witch behind the counter. Actually, Todd was handling most of the repartee with Ian adding the odd sardonic comment here and there, mostly mocking his brother.

Sirius had always kept his dark hair long at school, but in the photo, it reached well-past his shoulders and was matted and oily. It had to have been taken soon after his capture--there was still a spark of life in his eyes as they rolled madly in their sockets. Thirteen years surrounded by the Dementors of Azkaban had surely caused that to dim before finally sputtering out. How had he managed to stay sane long enough to plot an escape? Or had it been just an animal drive? Had someone botched up and seeing an opportunity for freedom, had he taken it instinctively with no conscious thought as to what he was doing?

Across the table, Benjamin and Laurel were arguing about Alfhild, a legendary witch turned pirate from the fifth century. Tristan was stirring his purple-red sorbet around and around inside the crystal snifter so it would melt faster. His teeth were full of tiny bits metal courtesy of archaic Muggle dentistry practices, and consuming anything particularly cold pained him. His attention seemed to be focused completely on his dessert, but Artemis knew better. She moved the newspaper slightly to the left, and his eyes moved subtly in the same direction. He was probably reading it through the reflection in the glass. It would be flipped and distorted, but Tristan was a clever kid with good eyes. 

She gave no indication that she'd figured out his little deceit, just smoothed the paper out flat on the table and waited for the children to finish their treats.


	6. Chapter 6

Laurel ended up with a cat, a big fluffy white fellow who she dubbed 'Chaos'. The night before the trip to King's Cross Station and then on to Hogwarts, Artemis found herself standing in the kitchen, looking at the feline newcomer where he was perched on the counter next to the dishboard. His ears were still in good condition, which either meant he'd learned fast to stay the hell away from Amelia's tomcat, Trouble, or he'd beaten the tar out of him. "So are you smart or just a bigger bully?" she asked.

Chaos, wisely, didn't answer.

There was a little ledge that ran all the way around the room, less than a foot from the high ceiling. Random bits of memorabilia had found their way up there over the years--decorative plates, a boot Todd had fished out of the Otter River on a camping trip, a little carved statue of a barn owl--and sat just at the edges of the light, collecting dust. She had to drag one of the benches over in order to even reach the shelf, feeling around above the mud room door for the bottle of fire whiskey she'd hidden up here. Ah, there it was.

It was a flask-sized red glass bottle with a very distinguished black and gold label. A good year, she supposed, though she wouldn't know. Kingsley had given it to her as a farewell present when she left the Aurors. She hadn't had more than the occasional glass of beer in the last decade. Not since she'd last sat down and really thought about Sirius.

Artemis didn't bother with a glass, just rubbed the dust off the mouth of the bottle with a corner of her shirt and uncorked it to take a swig. It burned deliciously on the way down and pooled in her belly. Ten years ago, she had hidden the bottle away from herself. There'd been others of course, squirreled around the house where the kids couldn't find them, but they didn't last long. Those that were still in The Hodge the night she decided to dry up, she'd poured down the loo, leaving just this one. Just in case sobriety was too much for her. Besides, it was a pretty bottle.

She settled herself at the kitchen table, rolling the bottle back and forth between her hands as her mind drifted back to her own days at Hogwarts. She'd made some of her best friends on the first day of her first year--James with his mischievous eyes, Remus with his scars and pale complexion, and Sirius...Sirius with his impossible hair and naughty smile. At eleven, he hadn't much use for girls thanks to a misogynistic streak that had been subtly taught to him by his awful family. Between Artemis' constant kicks to the shin every time he said something rude about her being a girl and Rosamund--a Hufflepuff two years ahead of them--blasting him with some truly creative hexes, he was soon convinced otherwise. Then he discovered that Artemis' insider knowledge of Hogwarts allowed for more and greater mischief than anything he and James could come up with on their own. Remus had tried so hard to be the voice of reason but was usually shouted down and dragged along. Peter tagged after them, desperate to fit in. Those had been good days, innocent days. 

The floor behind her squeaked, and Artemis turned to see Amelia stepping into the kitchen. She was wearing a nightgown, but her honey brown hair was still pulled up in a neat ponytail. "Can't sleep?" Artemis asked.

Amelia got the pitcher of milk out of the icebox and poured herself a mug. "I've been packing." She came and sat down on the bench beside Artemis, her eyes landing on the little bottle of liquor. "I haven't seen you drink more than butterbeer since I was little."

"And I hate that you noticed me drinking back then."

"You were sad, Mom. Even I could tell, and I was six and basically oblivious." Amelia leaned her head against Artemis' shoulder. 

Artemis sighed and put the cap back on the bottle of fire whiskey. "I thought you were packed weeks ago."

"All but a few things like my hairbrush that I needed before now. Plus, I went through Laurel and Benjamin's trunks and made sure they actually had what they needed. Figured I'd save you the money having to send her socks and his scales by owl post."

"You're a good big sister, you know that?" She kissed the side of Amelia's head. Her first child's hair smelled like lavender and a little bit of dust. "What did you think of the trip to Ollivander's?" She had rushed Laurel and Benjamin through their ice cream treats so she and Amelia could take them to visit the wand maker's shop. A witch or wizard's wand was the most important piece of equipment they acquired prior to the start of school. She remembered being eleven and holding her own wand of English oak for the first time. It had felt warm in her hand and a burst of blue-green light had filled the musty shop when she waved it. It had seen her through school and Auror training and the brief but terrifying war. Even now, she felt better with it sticking out of a pocket 

"They say fir wands are a good fit for survivors," Amelia replied. Benjamin had held maybe fifteen or sixteen wands before Ollivander handed him a twelve and half inch long wand made of wood from a fir tree. "Do you think that's why Ben's wand chose him?"

"Wands are funny things, but it would make me feel better if that was true. It will help him in Transfiguration class, if nothing else. He's such a quiet kid that it's easy to underestimate him. You'll keep an eye on him at school, won't you?"

"Of course, Mom, though it'll be easier if he gets Sorted into Gryffindor. Do you think he will?"

"I think the kid's got all kinds of hidden depths for the Sorting Hat to weigh. We'll see. You know I'm always happy when one of you ends up in my house, but I’ll love you no matter what."

"I think we've had a pretty good mix so far," Amelia admitted. "Three Hufflepuffs, two Slytherin, two Ravenclaw, and and two Gryffindors."

"Laurel's a shoo-in at Gryffindor, and if Max doesn't make it into Ravenclaw, I will eat the Sorting Hat."

Amelia gave her one of her patented 'Mom, you are crazy looks' that she had mastered about a week after she moved in. "Considering the hat is older than Professor Dumbledore, spends most of the year sitting on a shelf collecting dust and thinking up songs, and is sentient, I don't think eating it would be a good idea."

"You have been spending too much time around Max. Now, go to bed. I'm going to need your help dealing with everyone on the trains tomorrow." 

Amelia stood and gave Artemis a quick peck on the cheek before putting her mug in the sink and disappearing into the dark reaches of the house. Artemis sighed and climbed back up on the bench to put the fire whiskey away. It, like Sirius, belonged firmly in her past.

*

Instead of going back to her room, Amelia detoured down the hall to Edmund's. His light was still on, visible through the crack under his door. He was probably up late reading, as usual. She knocked softly before easing the door open.

There were something like fifteen bedrooms in The Hodge, not including small parlors and sewing rooms that could easily be converted to sleeping quarters, so there was more than enough space for each child to have a private room. Some, like Todd and Ian, preferred to share, but Edmund had taken their mother up on her offer for a single. He'd chosen one at the very end of the hall. The third floor didn't extend this far out, so the ceiling slanted slightly with the eaves. Rain was running steadily down the window panes.

Edmund was sitting at his desk, hunched over a long scroll, already almost completely filled with his neat writing. Amelia flopped down on the end of his bed and folded her legs under her. "I caught Mom drinking," she said after a few minutes of Edmund studiously ignoring her.

That made him set aside his quill. He turned in his chair, frowning. "Mom doesn't drink."

Amelia noted his use of 'Mom' and socked it away for later examination. Edmund and his younger sister, Sofia, had only joined the ragtag Moon clan three years ago after their parents were killed in a flying carriage accident (The Daily Prophet had called it 'tragic' and kept it on the front page for three whole days). Edmund had been particularly difficult about the whole thing, calling Artemis 'Ms. Moon' for the entire first year and a half. Lately, he'd switched to referring to 'Artemis', but 'Mom'? This was a first as far as she knew. "She drank when I was little. Those first couple of years, I don't think she slept much unless she was drunk. I didn't really pay attention to it then, but looking back, it's pretty obvious she was hurt and depressed."

"She was an Auror, right? Fought in the war against You Know Who?"

Amelia nodded.

"It might have been PTSD--post-traumatic stress disorder. I saw it mentioned in a Muggle article and did some research. Soldiers coming back from war often experience it. Increased drinking, insomnia, bad dreams--all signs."

"Okay, but what does that got to do with her breaking out the fire whiskey tonight?"

"Have you noticed anything today that could have triggered her, made her remember the war?"

"We went shopping, rode the train..."

"The Death Eater escaped from Azkaban," Ian said from the doorway. He was in his pajamas, leaning against the frame. When they both turned to look at him, he shrugged. "I heard you talking through the wall," he explained, jerking his thumb towards the wall he and Todd shared with Edmund. "Mom mentioned that she went to school with him and the Potters and Peter Pettigrew when we were getting fitted for robes."

"Just how close do you think she was to all of them?" Edmund asked. "Sirius Black's escape could be the trigger we're looking for."

"Mom has a couple of photo albums down in the library," Amelia said. "Maybe we can find something in there?"

*

The backstairs were the quickest way to the library, but they also squeaked and moaned at the slightest bit of weight on them. Plus, that hallway also led to the kitchen, and Amelia wasn't sure how late their mother planned to stay up. Artemis tended toward insomnia and Neela's constant nighttime fussing hadn't been helping. So it was down the imposing front staircase they went and then through the main--rarely used--double doors to the library. Edmund with bare feet and her and Ian in their socks barely made a sound. Taking the torch from Edmund, she went straight to a bookshelf near the window where Mom kept the photo albums and scrapbooks. There was an ancient love seat with clawed feet and a cover made from an old bed sheet to protect the upholstery in front of it, creating a nice private little corner. Somebody had been using it recently too as evidenced by the handful of albums open on the floor.

"Tristan and Benjamin," Edmund said when she looked to him for an explanation. "They've been spending a lot of time in here."

Tristan had lived in the Muggle world until two years ago when his mother had her parental rights revoked and a Squib managed to alert the wizarding community before he was transferred into care. He was still fascinated by the wonders of wizard-life, especially the moving photographs. Nobody knew Benjamin's background, including Ben himself, but there were things that made him just stop and stare, like the clock at the Weasleys that had a hand for every member of the family and that showed where they were.

You wouldn't think Artemis was a sentimental person, but she seemed bound and determined to document their lives as thoroughly as possible. She had a camera that could take both magical and Muggle film, so the albums were a mix of moving and still life. Amelia bent down and shone her light at the book on top--it was pictures from last Christmas. The school kids always stayed at Hogwarts during the winter holidays, and Mom would come up with the littles to celebrate, staying in Hogsmead with Great-Uncle Aberforth. The page on the left was images of them in the village, playing in the snow. There was Sofia making a snow angel, her arms moving endless up and down in the white powder, and Laurel and Max pelting each other with snowballs. The right hand page was opening presents on Christmas--Octavia holding up a plum-colored sweater to her chest, Tristan biting into one of the more horrible flavors of a Bertie Bott's Bean, Lyddie with a big red package bow stuck to the top of her head. The picture in the top left corner was of the two great uncles, Professor Dumbledore and Great-Uncle Aberforth, enjoying mugs of butterbeer by the fire, Lyddie curled sound asleep in the professor's lap. 

Setting the album aside, Amelia flipped through the rest of the stack. The younger boys had been looking mostly at Hogwarts-related ones--there was the photo taken her first year on Platform 9 and 3/4s, standing next to Percy Weasley with Todd's face a blur at the corner of the frame. That hadn't been a happy summer for anybody with Artemis and Feliks arguing constantly until he finally ran away. Amelia remembered missing her big brother terribly and trying to follow him around like a little lost duckling once she got to school. He quickly made it very clear that when he ran away from The Hodge, he'd run away from all the people in it as well. She'd bit him good when he told her that--he'd ended up in the infirmary with Madame Pomfrey patching up the puncture wounds in the webbing of his wand-hand. "We're not going to find anything in these—let’s check the shelves."

She turned the torch on the upper shelves where the oldest books sat. The one with the red velvet cover was from their first year living in The Hodge, she knew, but Edmund took it down anyway, flipping to the very front where she and Charlie Weasley were chasing chipmunks. "Aw, look how adorable you were," he mock-cooed. 

She elbowed him in the ribs. "Mom put together this album for me, Octavia, and Feliks--there's not going to be anything in here."

Ian, meanwhile, had his arm shoved behind the albums, feeling along the back of the bookcase. "Hang on, guys, I think I got something," he muttered. "It's slipped down behind the shelf...Got it!" He pulled out a slender volume with a plain butter-colored leather cover. 

Edmund took it from him and opened it to the front page, Amelia leaning around to give them all light to see by. The first page wasn't pictures, but a sheet of parchment stuffed in the sleeve saying simply 'The Marauders' in Artemis' spiky handwriting. He flipped to the next page, and there was Mom--a much younger Mom--standing in front of the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room wearing dress robes. The person holding the camera had either been very short or sitting on the floor, and Artemis looked awkward as she fussed with the collar of the robes. From the garland hanging off the mantle, this was from the Yule Ball. The next picture was of a young couple, probably the same age as Mom in the photos, dancing under strands of mistletoe and holly. She had long curly blond hair woven through with ribbons, and he wore round glasses. 

"Look, it's Harry Potter," Ian said, stabbing a finger at the dancing man, who flinched away, stepping protectively in front of his partner.

"No," Amelia argued, shaking her head, "These photos are too old, and the boy is too. Harry's going to be a third year this year, and that looks like it was taken at Yule."

"His dad maybe," Edmund murmured. "Look here," he said as he pointed to a picture on the opposite page, "Doesn't that look like the pictures of Peter Pettigrew they have in the history books?" The boy he indicated was short with a round, unfinished sort of face. He stood along the wall with a sandy-haired boy who was pointedly not looking at the camera. 

"Could be," Amelia admitted. The second picture on that page was of the two boys again, this time with Mom squished in between them, obviously holding the camera out in front with one hand to snap the picture. All three of them blinked from the flash. She slid the picture gently out of its sleeve and looked at the back. 'Peter, Artie, and Remus--Yule Ball wallflowers', it read in Artemis' hand. "Guess Mom didn't have a date." 

Ian took the picture from her, squinting at it before sliding it back into the book. Edmund turned the page and scoffed, "Maybe not." The top picture on the page was torn in half, but that was clearly Mom leaning in to kiss someone, their hand on her cheek, the camera held so close to their faces that the flash washed out their skin. 

"Wonder who is was," Ian whispered, "And what he did to make Mom so angry at him." He ran a finger along the torn edge of the photo paper.

"Ex-boyfriend?" Amelia suggested, leaning in closer to get a better look at the hand. "He's wearing a ring...it looks like some kind of crest."

They flipped through the rest of the album, which took them through the remainder of Mom's fourth year and into the fifth, but there was no sign of the boy with the ring. A couple of pictures were missing and there were three others where someone had been cut out. Edmund ended up going back to the kissing picture from Yule Ball and taking it out. "I'll look at it with a magnifying glass and see if I can figure out what crest that is."


	7. Chapter 7

Usually, Artemis and her clan rode into London with the Weasleys, but Arthur had won some money from the newspaper and they'd used most of it to take a month-long family vacation to Egypt. She was a little envious--Egypt was one of the places she'd always dreamed of visiting as a student--but then she imagined herself trying to keep up with Todd, Ian, and the Unholy Trio in a foreign country on as little sleep as Neela was allowing her, and she realized it was probably for the best that they had stayed home this summer.

"Everybody have their trunks?" she asked, doing a headcount of the group assembled in the front yard. "Where's Benjamin?"

"He's inside looking for his toad," Amelia answered as she swooped over to where Max was trying to climb into Todd's trunk and fished him out.

After looking over all the handsome owls and pretty kittens at Eeylops, Benjamin had settled on a common brown toad for a pet. Laurel--when discovering her new brother was struggling to come up with a name for the toad--dubbed it Mr. Hopper. So far, Mr. Hopper had escaped the aquarium where the toads were kept four times.

Edmund was sitting atop his trunk, nose in a book on...wizard heraldry? Artemis was all for learning and had a stack of books to read for fun on her nightstand whenever she got a spare moment, but Edmund loved knowledge just for knowledge's sake. He was at least the spiritual descendant of Rowena Ravenclaw, though she had been tempted to hunt down the Smith family tree and see if he was a biological one as well. Whatever the case, there'd be time enough to read on the train. "Edmund, go find your brother."

He looked up from his book and gave her what was supposed to be a withering glare, but Artemis had practice staring down psychopathic Death Eaters. One snotty teenage boy could only dream of making her shrink away. A year ago, though, he would have accompanied the glare with a snide comment about how Benjamin was not his brother, a cruel reminder that because he had not been born into this family, he didn't believe himself to be a part of it. Why were teenage boys so difficult? Teenage girls, she didn't understand--particularly not the girly ones like Amelia, but she vaguely remembered being one herself, once upon a time. She'd failed at giving Feliks a home, though, and it looked like she was probably going to fail Edmund too.

The sixteen-year-old gave a huffy sigh and marked his place in the book with a scrap of parchment. "Fine." Leaving the heraldry book on his trunk, he stalked back into the house.

She yawned, catching it on the back of her hand. Neela had woken her up crying at three am, and she'd brought the little girl back to her bed since she seemed more interested in sobbing softly than screeching like a banshee. As she drifted in and out of slumber, Neela had curled into her side, clutching the pink stuffed rabbit she'd brought with her from her former home.

Quiet was good. Quiet meant that maybe Artemis could get through today without her eyes crossing from exhaustion. At least they only had to navigate the trains, and she wasn't being called upon to fly a broomstick. That right there would be asking for disaster. 

She was going to miss having Amelia and Sofia around to help with the little ones. Sofia was currently sitting in the wet grass, mindless of the stains it was no doubt leaving on her dress, playing patty-cake with Lyddie. Thank goodness she wasn't crying this year. In the past, any change or transition was enough to bring tears to the sensitive girl's eyes. Where her older brother stomped around and sulked and glared, Sofia burst into tears at the slightest provocation. 

The kitchen door banged open as Edmund escorted Benjamin back outside. The small dark-haired boy was cradling a large brown toad in his hands. Artemis held out the cardboard shoe box with the holes punched in the top that he and Laurel had decorated last night. Laurel had written in her big, loopy cursive 'Mr. Hopper's Wild Ride' on the side in green marker. "All right, in he goes."

"Are you sure he's going to be okay to travel in there? It can't be comfortable sliding around like that," Benjamin asked worriedly. "Maybe we should have bought him a cage yesterday."

"He'll be fine," Artemis assured him. "Toads like places that are dark and a little damp."

"Oh, I guess that explains why I found him behind the toilet in the upstairs bathroom."

Taking some twine out of her pocket, Artemis used it to close up the box, leaving enough to be used as a handle. Then Benjamin darted off to join Laurel (who was literally bouncing with excitement) and Tristan. 

Taking her wand out of the big pocket on the side of her leg, she locked the kitchen door with a flick of her wrist and started down the drive. The big kids used this as an excuse to practice their levitation spells, steamer trunks knocking into one another as they bobbed up and down the rutted dirt path like dolphins leaping over waves. Todd tried riding Ian's and made it maybe a hundred feet before toppling off into the dust. She thought about saying something and decided not to waste her breath. He’d fallen a lot farther when he was playing Quidditch.

She felt the inner security charm chime in her bones as she crossed its perimeter and stopped, waiting for all the children to pass by before snapping her fingers and whispering the password under her breath. Instantly, the full force of the charm flared into place, causing green sparkles in her peripheral vision. It was a quarter mile to the end of the drive, most of it wending through a scraggly wood that might have been half orchard at one point in the distant past. Despite the encroaching autumn weather, only some of the wild apple trees bore fruit. The others still wore the green shine of the height of summer or the barrenness of winter. There was even one or two that were blooming as if spring had just begun. One of The Hodge's previous owners had been a witch with a green thumb. Lyddie kept veering off the path to pick the tiny white flowers that had sprung up among the weeds that grew in the ditches. By the time they reached the low stone wall that marked the outer boundaries of the property, she had two chubby fists full. 

For a family of one or two children, there were Portkeys scattered about the English countryside to transport them into London. The Diggories and the Lovegoods usually took that route. The Weasleys--up until last fall--had owned a Ford Angelica enchanted to hold their entire family. Unfortunately, Ron and Harry Potter had stolen it, flown it to Hogwarts, and crashed into the Whomping Willow that had stood on the school grounds since Artemis was a student. Last she'd heard from Uncle Albus, the car had gone feral, roaming the Dark Forest with flickering headlights and a mournful-sounding horn. 

The Moon family, however, was even larger than the Weasleys and had far too many trunks, owl cages, broomsticks, and small children to trust to Floo powder or Portkeys. So this year, Artemis made a few phone calls and arranged for them to be picked up and transported to King's Cross station. Once their motley parade was passed the wall, she whistled two shrill notes--one high, one not-so-high--and the outer security barrier snapped into place. "Constant vigilance!" had been the watchword when she was an Auror, and it was a hard habit to break.

Looking down at her watch (a Muggle device, the face of which was cunningly fashioned to look like a sundial) she noted that they were early for once. Just a single minute early, but still...when you were the mother of fourteen, the littlest victories were worth celebrating. "Stand back from the road," she ordered Tristan and Laurel, who were both craning their necks to look for their ride.

It arrived with a BANG of displaced air and a flash of blinding light, like a firework going off inside a glass jar. Where once had been an empty gravel road in need of re-grading, there was now a triple-decker bus painted a lurid shade of purple with the words 'KNIGHT BUS' spelled out in tacky gold letters above the windshield. The driver was blinking furiously and rubbing at his eyes as if he weren't used to so much sun. 

"Hello, Stan," Artemis greeted the pimply young conductor as he stepped out of the bus and frowned at the mess of children and luggage. 

"'Mornin' to you, Miz Moon," Stan said in return. "This all of 'em then?"

"All of them that's living at home," she replied as she plucked Edmund's owl's cage off the ground and shooed Laurel and Max ahead of her onto the bus. "Sorry about keeping you boys up so late, but until they extend the line out this way, we're limited on full family travel when we've got all this luggage." She nodded to Ernie, the bus's driver, and then set about finding a place in the bus for everyone and everything. At least this year, Stan and Ern had dropped off their last passenger before coming to collect them. Last time they’d tried to ride the Knight Bus (coming back from a fair in Edinburgh), there'd been an elderly witch asleep in the last bed when Artemis' thundering herd had boarded. The cranky old woman had sat bolt upright and fired off a nasty jinx in Ian's direction at the first shout. It would've left him hairless for the rest of his life if Artemis hadn't managed to deflect it. There was still a scorch mark on the side of the bus from where it hit.

When they were finally all piled in--sitting on the six brass beds and on top of trunks since the Knight Bus had no seats--Ern pulled the cord to honk the horn and off they went with another loud BANG. The beds and trunks and everybody inside the bus slid backwards as the bus leaped forward and suddenly arrived on a busy London street. Ern paid little mind to street signs, traffic cops, crosswalks, or other vehicles as he careened through the city towards the train station. The bus squeezed itself into impossibly small openings and threaded through byways constructed before the advent of the automobile. The Muggles moving around them paid no notice whatsoever to the big purple bus so busily defying physics. 

"What...what's going on?" Benjamin stammered, looking around with wide, confused eyes.

"This is the Knight Bus," Artemis explained. She reached out and tucked the boy closer to her side under the pretense of preventing him from sliding off the end of the bed. She'd learned long ago to take any excuse for loving touch when it came to the newly arrived children. It took them months (or sometimes years) before they were comfortable with physical affection, so she made due with ruffling their hair, putting her hands on their shoulders to guide them, even turning the little ones loose on them for dive-bomb kisses and hugs. "If you're ever stranded, all you have to do is stick out your wand hand, and it'll show up. It usually operates...well, at night, but Stan and Ernie are making an exception for us on the first day of school."

Benjamin shook his head, a look of disbelief on his face. "This being a wizard is so weird."

Artemis couldn't help but laugh. "That's the best part though. Who'd want to be a Muggle and miss all this?" She waved her hand, taking in the whole bus, all his siblings, and the motley crew of animals. Amelia was smacking Todd's hand away from Trouble's crate, and Laurel had her wand out, spell book balanced on one knee as she practiced wrist motions. Tristan leaned over her shoulder, gently correcting her. Edmund's nose was buried in that heraldry book again.

"It just gets to be too much sometimes, you know?" Benjamin admitted. He tucked his legs up to his chest and rested his chin on them, mindless of his dusty trainers on the scratchy wool blanket of the bed.

She gave him a little, one-armed squeeze. "That I can understand--I get overwhelmed sometimes and I was born into this. You've got your journal, right?" Every school-age child in her home was given a small leather-bound journal to write in. It gave them somewhere safe to put their thoughts and a chance to take what was swirling around in their head out. The journals were one hundred percent theirs--the covers locked together with a little gold key and most of children rigged trap spells on top of that. If you tried to break into Amelia's, for instance, your hands would swell up to five times their normal size--far too large to handle the tiny key and thin pages (as Todd and Ian had discovered last summer). Sofia's doused the would-be peeper with skunk spray, and Edmund's started shouting at you loud enough to wake the dead in a voice that sounded suspiciously like its owner's.

"I don't know what to put in it," Benjamin admitted.

"Anything," Artemis explained. "Absolutely anything. I think Edmund first started writing lists of all the books he could ever remember reading. Octavia once told me that she just starts writing about her day and everything comes out in a big rushing stream of words that flows almost too quickly for her to get it all down. She says it helps her process everything that's gone on in her day. Let's her look back on it and think about what it means in context when she's a little removed from the situation. You can ask her about it when you get to school."

"She's going to be one of my teachers, right?"

"She will be helping in your Care of Magical Creatures class and your astronomy class." Octavia hadn't been home much this past summer, spending most of her time finishing up a last class or two, applying for jobs, and traveling with her Muggle friends from the teaching college, but she and Benjamin had met several times. It was hard not to like Octavia with her gorgeous smile and easygoing manner. "If you asked, I'm sure she would make time to talk to you."

The Knight Bus suddenly screeched to a halt in front of the train station. "All ashore who's goin' ashore!" Stan hollered.

The next few minutes were sheer chaos as they disembarked, got the trunks loaded onto trolleys (without the use of magic since they were surrounded by hundreds of Muggles), and Artemis did multiple headcounts. It always amazed her how little Muggles actually noticed. If she lived in a society where owls were not regularly kept as pets, she might have found their little party decidedly odd. But nobody paid them any mind except the one lady whose ankle Owain accidentally ran his trolley into. He'd chosen a male tawny owl from Eeylops and named it 'Bruce'. Bruce's cage was sitting right on the end of his trunk, the collision making the bird hoot and shuffle uncomfortably on his perch. The Muggle lady turned around and gave the boy the nastiest glare while muttering something under her breath but stalked off without saying anything about the bird. "Bitch," Owain called after her.

Artemis opened her mouth to reprimand him, but before she could, Todd reached over and slapped his brother upside the head. "Watch your mouth," the red-haired boy ordered.

There was a moment where Artemis was sure Owain was going to hit Todd back (despite the year's difference in age, Owain was both taller by several inches and heavier by about twenty pounds). She stepped forward, knocking her trolley against his, making Bruce screech and flap his wings as best he could within the confines of his cage.

Owain turned his nasty glare on her then, and she arched an eyebrow as if silently asking, 'Do you really want to go there with me?', at the same time that she said, "Todd, don't hit your brother." She probably says some variation of that sentence a hundred times a day. 

A train had just let off passengers at Platform 9--a flood of people making it hard to navigate to the barrier. Edmund made it there first and just stepped back through the brick as if it were thin air and disappeared. Benjamin, who had taken Artemis seriously when she told the younger ones to stick close, gaped openly. 

"Where'd he go?"

"Platform nine and three quarters," Artemis said. "It's where you catch the train from London to Hogwarts."

"It's easier if you run at it and close your eyes at the last second. Fools your brain into not panicking because even though you know it isn't solid, your brain still freaks out that you're going to run into a wall," Laurel said, literally bouncing with excitement on Benjamin's far side. For the past decade, Artemis dragged Laurel along to King's Cross to see the older children off on the train, and since she was about three, Laurel has been impatiently waiting for the day when she too could climb on the Hogwarts Express and head off to school. Max was the only child Artemis knew who wanted to go to school more, but Laurel reserved the level of enthusiasm Max had about his future education for dragons. (Octavia had explained to Artemis that most Muggle children were not normally this excited for school, but then again Muggle children do not get to go to Hogwarts. Artemis even remembered being excited for classes to start, and she lived in the damn school.)

Max, who had just run through the barrier after his older brother...who was wearing a backpack. She had noticed it on the Knight Bus but had forgotten to ask what was in it. If it were Ian or Todd, then she'd be worried about Dungbombs, but Max didn't go in much for pranks. By the time she crossed the barrier (after Laurel and Benjamin charged through it full-tilt), the eight year old boy was nowhere to be seen. He'd left his Mouse ears at home, which made him even harder to pick out of a crowd.

"Artemis!" a woman shouted, and suddenly, Artemis had her arms full of Molly Weasley, who looked almost tan after her month in the Egyptian sun.

Her next door neighbor looked like a proper house-witch--pleasingly plump with curly red hair and a penchant for colorful dresses. Nobody would be surprised to find out that she was the mother of a herd of redhead children (yes, Todd on several occasions had tried to pass himself off as a Weasley). Artemis always looked like she was escorting a (very) small school. It probably didn't help that she still preferred jeans and cargo pants to dresses or robes. She looked like one of the students at Octavia's college. "How was Egypt?" she asked as she pulled back from the hug. There was worry lurking in Molly's eyes that she hadn't expected. "And what's wrong?"

Molly's hands came up to Artemis' face, tilting it down so the older woman could look at her properly. Artemis was suddenly acutely aware of the messy ponytail she'd pulled her hair into this morning instead of bothering with a hairbrush and how red her eyes looked in the brief glimpse she caught of them while brushing her teeth (tooth brushing was always chaotic and usually ended up with her standing in the bathtub trying to supervise three or four of the younger kids around a mouthful of toothpaste). "Have you talked to your uncle since the news broke?"

Black--she meant since the Daily Prophet had announced Black's escape from Azkaban, and by 'uncle', she meant Uncle Albus. Uncle Aberforth didn't particularly like people and didn't bother himself too much about things like the news. And, strangely, "No, I haven't heard from him."

Molly hooked her fingers around the backs of Artemis' ears and yanked her down until she was face-to-face with her. "They kept it out of the papers," Molly said so quietly that it was doubtful anyone could hear them over the noise on the platform, "But the guards overheard Black talking in his sleep--he kept saying 'He's at Hogwarts'. The Ministry's afraid that he's going to come after Harry."

Artemis swallowed, her throat suddenly parched. In the aftermath of You-Know-Who's defeat, she had tried to convince Uncle Albus to give her custody of Harry. She was his godmother, after all. But whatever Lily had done in her final moments that had caused Voldemort's Killing Curse to backfire would only work if Harry stayed close to one of Lily's blood relatives, namely her horrible Muggle sister, Petunia. Uncle Albus had explained that to her, several times using small easy-to-understand words, and Artemis had broken down in tears because the only thing that was left of James and Lily and everything that was good about the last several years was going to be taken from her and left to a petty, spiteful Muggle woman and her horrid, judgmental husband.

Artemis jerked her head out of Molly's hands. "I'm going to kill him," she snarled.

"Artemis Ariana Ignota Dumbledore-Moon, you are not going chasing after Sirius Black!" Molly scolded. "The Ministry has its best witches and wizards looking--they've even pulled Arthur from his department to help..."

Artemis shook her head. "I wasn't talking about Black--though that traitorous bastard had better pray to whatever dark power he worships that we never cross paths--I was talking about Uncle Albus. I can't believe Harry's been in danger for weeks, and he told me nothing!"

"Because he knew you'd be like this," Molly said. "Stop for a moment and think--what can you do for Harry that Dumbledore and the Ministry can't? You have a horde of children already that need your love and attention."

"I hate not being able to help my godson. I promised James and Lily that I would watch out for him, but every time he needs me the most, Uncle Albus won't let me near him. Harry doesn't even know I exist!"

"I know, sweetie, but Dumbledore must have his reasons. In the meantime, I do the best I can to mother him whenever he crosses my path. It's the least I can do for Lily...and for you."

Molly was right (she usually was), but that didn't help the fact that Artemis' heart felt bruised. Between the old feelings of anger and betrayal stirred up by Black's escape and the renewed fear for Harry, it felt like someone had punched right through her rib cage. "I know. Thank you." Rubbing the side of her hand across the bridge of her nose, she forced herself to look up and out across Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Of course her eyes immediately landed on an untidy mop of black hair about two meters away. The boy's back was to her, but that was little Ron Weasley next to him and the girl with the bushy brown hair must be the Muggle-born genius that she'd heard so much about (even Edmund spoke with grudging respective about her intelligence). This was the closest she had ever been to Harry--it had to be James' son with hair like that--since he was just a tiny baby, so little that he hadn't understood what feet were and that his were attached to him. She'd been utterly charmed by the smallness of him and the sweet baby smell of him. He'd grown so much since then, even if he was built more along the lines of Todd, rather than Owain.

Before she could make up her mind about whether or not to approach him, Laurel and Tristan crashed into her. "I love you, Mom; see you at Christmas; we're going to get on the train now!" Laurel said, hanging onto Artemis' waist, her words coming out in a rush.

Artemis bent to wrap her arms around Laurel, pressing her face briefly to the top of her daughter's head, breathing in the lavender scent of Laurel's shampoo. Laurel had come straight home from the hospital to The Hodge. It was boggling to think about her going off to school. "I'm going to miss you, ladybug. The house is going to be too quiet with you gone." She dropped to a knee and extended one arm to draw Tristan into the hug. He immediately went stiff at the touch, but she didn't let that stop her from embracing him. "And, you sir, I want you to promise me that you'll take good care of your little sister and brother." She squeezed him tighter despite the awkwardness. "At the very least, if you can't keep them out of disaster, make sure you're still around to let me know how it went down." That coaxed a small smile from him, and he relaxed a little so it wasn't quite like hugging a coat rack.

The large red steam engine blew its whistle--a warning to any students still skulking on the platform that the train would be leaving soon. Tristan and Laurel squirmed out of her arms and raced to grab their things and board the train. A tap on Artemis' shoulder turned out to be Sofia, who handed Lyddie over. The little blond toddler was looking around with wide eyes at all the commotion around her. Relieved of her burden, Sofia placed a quick kiss on Artemis' cheek before picking up the carrier that held her sweet-tempered black cat, Shade. Amelia was next, handing off Neela and then wrapping her mother and baby sisters in a giant hug. Then Todd and Ian swooped in for a quick hug and kiss each before joining up with a knot of children their age, some of whom Artemis vaguely recognized from the Quiddith matches she'd seen. Edmund waved briefly before stepping onto the train. Of Owain, there was no sign, so she assumed he must have boarded already without saying good-bye. 

It wasn’t until the Hogwarts Express pulled away from the platform that Artemis realized she hadn’t seen Max since they’d come through the barrier. “Molly, have you seen Max?” With the students on the train, Platform 9 ¾ was emptying quickly. Panic seized at her insides as she whipped her head around, eyes darting frantically from one departing family to another. “Excuse me,” she said, grabbing the elbow of an older wizard as he passed, “Have you seen a young boy? Eight years old, brown hair, olive skin?” The wizard shook his head and then shook off her hand. Neela, feeling her panic, started to wail. Artemis bounced her on her hip as best she could when burdened with Lyddie as well.

“Could he have gone to the loo?” Molly asked, craning to see over the crowd. “What was he wearing?”

“Blue jumper and jeans,” Artemis replied. Which, now that she thought about it, was remarkably understated for Max. “He had…oh, he wouldn’t…” Her eyes widened as she spun around to face her neighbor. “That little shit.”

“What?”

“He had his school bag with him.” And it had been weighed down with something—he’d almost fallen on his back like an overturned turtle trying to climb the stairs on the Knight Bus. “He’s on the train.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew it was true. She could practically taste the truth of them. 

“Oh dear,” was all Molly could manage.


	8. Chapter 8

Max waited in the lavatory until he felt the train lurch into motion. Then, he set his backpack down on the closed toilet lid and pulled out the robe. It was a plain black work robe—the kind that Madam Malkin’s had lined up in racks upon racks near the back of the shop—spelled down to his size by Sofia. He had fibbed when she asked why he wanted such a boring robe and claimed that he needed it for when he pretended to be a Hogwarts professor. She’d just laughed—he’d never lied to her before, so she had no reason to suspect anything—and asked what courses he taught. ‘Defense Against the Dark Arts’, he’d replied, spinning the story as he went along. This would be his third year teaching the class—beating the curse that his siblings all half-jokingly mentioned—but this would be his first year to also teach an Alchemy class for upper level students. He told Sofia that he sincerely hoped that she would enroll since her marks had been so excellent in his DADA classes.

And because she was his favorite sister, though he hadn’t said that part aloud. Everyone else in their family was noisy—Ian and Todd with their jokes and pranks, Edmund with his grumpiness, Amelia with her bossiness, even Tristan could get loud when he was playing with Laurel and Benjamin. Over all of it was Mom, with her thundering voice that could be heard all over the house. Only Sofia listened. When he’d put together his master plan, he’d only been worried about two people catching him: Mom, because of her Auror training and mom-ness, and Sofia because she always saw more than she let on.

Shaking the wrinkles out of the robe, he tugged it on over his jumper and jeans and fastened it closed with shaking fingers. This wasn’t a play put on for Mom in the front parlor, this was…everything. If he pretended hard enough and was really, really lucky, then maybe he wouldn’t have to go back to that awful Muggle school next week where they only taught boring things like math and science (which, no matter how hard Mom tried to convince him it was like magic, it was still like going at things the long way around).

Zipping his bag back up, he opened the door to the lavatory and peeked out. There were still plenty of students milling around, moving in and out of compartments with shouts of greeting, staggering a little when the train went around a curve. He stepped out into the crush and let the flow of people carry him two cars farther down the train until a witch pushing a trolley loaded with snacks blocked the path. Max’s stomach rumbled at the sight of the platter of cauldron cakes with their green icing and yellow sprinkles—he’d been too nervous to eat much breakfast this morning—but he didn’t want to call attention to himself by purchasing something. Instead, he ducked into the closest compartment…not realizing until he had the door shut behind him that perhaps he should have checked to make sure none of his siblings were in here. That was key to his master plan—avoiding all members of his family until after the Sorting Ceremony. Which wouldn’t be so hard except there were a million of them.

Today must be his lucky day, because not only was he not faced with any of his brothers or sister, but he’d also managed to find a handful of soon-to-be First Years.

“Um…hi,” he said. “Can I sit with you?”

“Only if you tell us your name first,” said the big black boy seated near the window. He was still in his Muggle clothes—a t-shirt with the yellow and red emblem of the Sumbawanga Sunrays on the front and a pair of khaki shorts—and was seated next to a smaller boy with straw blond hair that looked like a kindergartener had cut it with a pair of safety scissors while the train was moving. In fact, based on the amount of loose hairs decorating the shoulders of his robe, he may have done just that.

“Max…uh, Papadopoulos,” he said. Which wasn’t a complete lie—that’s what his last name had been before Mom adopted him. He’d only been three—still a baby—when Grand-Uncle Ciro died, and the Ministry had brought him to live at The Hodge, but Mom had made sure he knew how to say and spell his original name. Sometimes, he thought he could remember his great-uncle saying it, a deep rumbling that vibrated in the middle of Max’s chest, behind the bone.

“I’m Al Sibale, and this is Jeff.” He jerked his thumb at the blond kid, who gave a little wave and slid further down in his seat, leaving yellow hairs stuck in the upholstery where his head used to be. “Is this going to be your first year at Hogwarts?”

Jeff snorted. “He’s five, Al. Of course it is.”

“I’m not five!” Max squeaked; his heart felt like it had frozen in his chest. If an eleven-year-old who looked like he’d cut his own hair could see he wasn’t old enough, than what hope did he have of fooling anyone else? “I’m just small for my age.” It’s what Mom said about Benjamin every time she felt the need to justify sending him to Hogwarts this year.

“Peace, friends,” Al said. “Jeff didn’t mean any harm by it. He should know better than to make assumptions about people based on looks.” The look he turned on his friend was heavy with meaning, but Max didn’t know what kind. Jeff rolled his eyes at the look, the expression making him look sort of girlish with his fine-boned face. Maybe it was just because Laurel made that expression all the time.

A knock on the compartment door made Max jump, and he sort of fell into a seat across the aisle from the two other boys as the door opened to reveal the witch with the snack trolley. “Candies, boys?”

Mom always packed everybody going to Hogwarts a sandwich to eat on the train, but Neela had been awfully fussy that morning, so Amelia had been the one to actually make the food. In all honestly, nobody minded because a Mom-sandwich was usually peanut butter and jelly or honey, all sloppy and oozing everywhere. An Amelia-sandwich was made with a lot more care and had things like vegetables on it (which shouldn’t taste good, Max thought, but somehow his sister managed to sneak things like sprouts in between the bread without him noticing until it he’d tucked most of it away) and was cut neatly on the diagonal. He’d managed to wheedle one out of her that morning by whining about how hungry he was already even though he’d just finished breakfast. It was currently wrapped in a paper napkin in the front pocket of his backpack. He hoped it wasn’t leaking mustard all over his comb.

So, really, he didn’t have any reason to buy something, but the sight of the pumpkin pasties was making his mouth water. Octavia had made a batch from a recipe she’d found on the internet (a Muggle information sharing network that she had tried to explain to him, Laurel, and Tristan the last time they got to visit her flat in London), but they weren’t quite the same as store-bought ones and besides, Ian and Todd had eaten most of them before Max had even known she’d taken them out of the oven. He had a few Knuts in the bottom of his backpack, but he’d planned on saving those.

Before he could really make up his mind, Jeff squirmed and pulled out a little pink change purse from somewhere under his robes. “I’ll get it,” he said, and Max didn’t miss the grateful look Al shot him. He’d thought they’d met on the train, but maybe they knew each other from before. From school or something.

Jeff ended up buying cauldron cakes and pumpkin pasties for all three of them and a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans that they passed back and forth. “What do you think this one is?” Al asked, holding up a white jelly bean. “Cottage cheese?”

“Maybe clotted cream?” Max suggested. Bertie Bott’s weren’t his favorite candy—there wasn’t much enjoyment in biting into one and finding the taste of vomit flooding your mouth.

“Maybe cauliflower,” was Jeff’s suggestion.

Al made a face and dropped it back in the bag. “My stomach’s queasy already over this Sorting thing.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Max said from around a mouthful of cauldron cake. “They’ll just call us up one by one and then you put on the Sorting Hat and it scans your brain a bit and then tells everybody what house you’re going to be in.”

Jeff leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, half-finished pumpkin pasty forgotten on the seat next to him. “How’d you know all that?”

“I’ve got loads of siblings,” Max said with a shrug. “I asked them.” And gotten a different story from most of them (Owain had told him to sod off, and Tristan had just sort of shrugged), so he’d ultimately gone to Mom. She’d been a hatstall, she told him—one of the few that the Sorting Hat struggled so hard to place that she’d spent over six minutes sitting in front of the school arguing with it mentally.

Jeff suddenly looked like he wanted to cry. “So, they say your name in front of everyone?” he asked, his voice quaking just a bit.

Max nodded.

There were tears in his eyes now as he turned to Al. “They’re going to say my real name in front of the whole school, and if I try to correct them, I’m just going to look like a freak.”

Max must have looked confused, because Al explained, “His real name is Alessandra. He was hoping that he’d be able to tell everyone that it was Jeff from the start.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to talk to the professor before they start calling people?” Max offered, secretly glad that he wasn’t the only one trying to start school under false pretenses.

Before anyone had a chance to speak again, the door to their compartment opened and three of Max’s siblings fell in—literally, in Tristan’s case. He tumbled in, one ankle hooking Laurel’s and dragging her down as well as Benjamin slammed the door shut and hopped over the both of them. “Did you see the look on his face?” Benjamin crowed.

“We are going to be so dead when he catches up to us,” Tristan moaned, but he was smiling, small and secretive.

Laurel giggled as she rolled off of him. “We’re just First Years—I doubt he’ll recognize us.”

“Still…dead,” Tristan said again as he climbed back to his feet, his eyes finding Max as he looked around the compartment. “What are you doing here?”

Max fought the urge to shrink back and try to blend in with the upholstery. Instead, he straightened his back, tilted his chin up, and replied, “I’m going to go to Hogwarts,” in the tone Mom used when she’d brooked no argument.

Clearly, it wasn’t as effective coming from him because Laurel snorted and Tristan had his “oh, no, someone’s going to get yelled at” face on. Benjamin just looked confused (which was normal). “I thought you had to be eleven to get in,” Max’s newest brother said.

“You do,” Laurel said, “Which is why Max is going to be in some much trouble when they find out!” She sounded positively gleeful at the prospect, but Max knew from experience that it wasn’t malicious.

“Well, if you don’t tell anyone, then how are they going to find out?” Max shot back, a little more snappishly than he meant.

“Wait—just how old are you?” Al broke in.

Laurel butted in before Max could open his mouth. “He’s eight.”

“That explains why you’re so tiny,” Al said, leaning in and squinting his eyes at Max. “I wouldn’t have guessed though. Most people wouldn’t. Everyone knows you have to be eleven to start at Hogwarts, so nobody is going to question how old you are once you get off the train.” He turned to look at Jeff. “Just like nobody’s going to question you when you tell them your name.”

“We just have to get past the Sorting Hat,” Jeff muttered, chewing on a hangnail.

Laurel’s nose twitched to the side as she considered the problem. “The First Years go across the lake by boat…then what?” She looked at Tristan, who was the only one of them to have actually seen and gone through a Sorting.

“Professor McGonagall takes you into a little room off the Great Hall to wait while everyone else comes in,” he answered. “The hat was in there, waiting on the stool you sit on in front of everybody.”

Laurel smiled. “I think I have a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a constant work in progress. I update when the muse bothers to pay a visit, so I can't promise when the next part shows up.


End file.
